What stories would the walls tell, if they could speak? A house and its inhabitants, from the Nazi era to the present day
When 15-year-old Nele Bittner and 90-year-old Irma Thon meet in the stairwell of a four-storey period building, their conversation breathes life into what Nele always thought was boring old history.
The narrator of Nele and Irma’s story is the house itself, whose walls, hallways, pipes and nooks and crannies harbour the memories of all those who have lived in it over the past hundred years. Irma has a special connection to the building: she and her Nazi-supporting parents lived here when she was a child. Nele, meanwhile, lives on the top floor, in a flat once occupied by the Sternheim family – and Irma feels responsible for what happened to them.
For this house, everything happens simultaneously: when little Ruth Sternheim skips down the stairs, the house remembers the SA who, years later, will smash the window of the Sternheims’ ground-floor watch shop with their truncheons. While Irma looks back on her life, Nele’s questioning of her own family brings to light things they had hoped to suppress.
A daring, courageous novel about remembrance, responsibility and the shadow cast by history.
• For fans of Imre Kertész, Saša Stanišić and Jenny Erpenbeck