Recently I finished reading, “The German Daughter” by Marius Gabriel and found it very interesting. A decorated Royal Air Force (RAF) veteran of the Second World War passes away in the late 1960s leaving his grand daughter totally distraught. He had brought her up and cared for her more than anybody else. Agnes, the young lady, soon stumbles upon some evidence that changes her world forever. She realises that what she had been told all her life- that her parents had died in a car accident – was not true at all. Now she wonders if they were her parents at all. It then sinks in that the recently deceased grandfather who had brought her up with so much love -was not whom she had always imagined him to be!
These tumultuous events prompt her to give up her job and start searching for answers to many questions that torment her. She ignores the well meaning advice of friends to get on with her life and not dig into the past. She has no idea what will emerge from the web of deceit cultivated over the years in England, Norway and in Germany.
Agnes’s frantic search takes her first to Norway and to then undivided Berlin where most of the story is set. In the course of the search, she meets her biological mother, with whose life the actual story starts in Norway in the Second World War. She finds out about her father and about a sister, whom she did not know existed till then. This sister lives in East Berlin. On seeing her it becomes Agnes’s deepest desire to get her to safety and a better life in West Berlin.
The story moves at a fast pace. The author skilfully presents the story over the past (1940s) and the present (1960s) making it quite absorbing. Recommended if you like a thriller with lots of history thrown in.
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Prem Rao : Stories from a Story Teller 