Each of us has something that feels essential to who we are. For Hans Frambach, it's the crimes of the Nazi era, which have hurt him for as long as he can remember. That's why he became an archivist at the Bureau of Past Management; now, though, he's wondering if he should make a change. For his best friend, Graziela, that past was also her focal point - until she met a man who desired her. From then on, sexual pleasure became the key to her life; a concept she's now beginning to doubt. Hans and Graziela thought the Nazi crimes were the inheritance that neither could bear, but can we really blame Nazism for everything? Iris Hanika shows how the crimes of the Nazi era hold the Germans in their clutches to this day. Can a country manage its past, or ought we to remain helpless in the face of the horrific crimes of the Holocaust? "A brave account of one man's struggle to come to terms with his nation's past, which draws an artful distinction between memory and memorial.' Michael Arditti; "A bold and absorbing novel (...) translated sensitively by Abigail Wender." Irish Times; "It's impossible to live with this guilt. Making that so emphatically clear by means of fiction, after sixty-five years of intense debate, is this novel's great achievement." Andreas Platthaus, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

Winner of the European Union Prize for Literature

About the Author
Iris Hanika, born in Wurzburg in 1962, has lived in Berlin since 1979. She received the prestigious Hans Fallada Prize in 2006. Her novel Treffen sich zwei was shortlisted for the German Book Prize in 2008. The Bureau of Past Management was awarded the European Union Prize for Literature and the LiteraTour Nord Prize. She was a resident at the Villa Massimo in Rome in 2017/18. Her most recent novel Echos Kammern won the Hermann Hesse Literaturpreis and the Prize of the Leipzig Book Fair. Abigail Wender is a poet and translator. Her debut poetry collection, Reliquary, was published by Four Way Books in February 2021. Her writing and translations have appeared in Asymptote, The Cortland Review, Disquieting Muses Quarterly, Epiphany, Kenyon Review Online, New Orleans Review, SWIMM, Tupelo Quarterly, and others. She serves as president of Friends of Writers and vice-president of the Poetry Society of America. A graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, she lives in New York City and Sheffield, Massachusetts.

Reviews
"A novel that opens up a window. A masterpiece." Denis Scheck, ARD druckfrisch


Awards
Winner of European Union Prize for Literature 2010.



Book Information
ISBN 9783863913076
Author Iris Hanika
Format Paperback
Page Count 176
Imprint V & Q Books
Publisher V & Q Books