FATHERLAND A Memoir of War, Conscience, and Family Secrets

In his first audiobook, NEW YORKER writer Burkhard Bilger proves to be a highly effective narrator of this tangled family history--a story of tacit suppression and a reporter's personal quest. From defeat in one war, through the Depression, to Nazism and another war, Bilger's grandparents were typical Germans, rooted in the German borderlands with Alsatian France. Bilger's maternal grandfather's role in the war is the buried core of his narrative, but this is also a journey of recognition and acceptance, a paradigm for so many German families' struggles since the last war. Bilger's personal investment in that story and his own links to its protagonist provide the core for this vivid portrayal of everyday people caught between nations, and between duty and conscience. D.A.W. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine [Published: JUNE 2023]