The Long Wake: A West German Tale

In a novel of interlinked stories The Long Wake takes us back to a small German city a quarter-century after the Third Reich. Frank Miller, an American expat, meets a generation of Germans still in recovery: his landlady the proud daughter of a Nazi General, his chess partner a Holocaust survivor, his girlfriend an conservative Catholic, his boss a fierce advocate of the old Prussian order.

His colleagues introduce him to others unbalanced by the war and its aftermath -- a sadistic Englishman and his German wife, a Siemens executive whose nightmares of the bombings make him a danger to his family. Ranged against them are those born just after the war who demand their elders face up to their complicity in a murderous regime. With each revelation, the pressure mounts on Frank to understand and find his place among these troubled people.