Description
We don't choose the times we live in nor the times that shape us. Neither did Lud and Alma. Lud, who was born in 1899, and his brother Wilhelm revere Bach and Hölderlin, and share the same unattainable ideals. Wilhelm, who joins the Nazi party early on, measures others according to its standards; Lud measures himself by them, which torments him for the rest of his life. Alma lost her parents when she was a child, and her godfather Lud – who is only a few years older than her – and his housekeeper become a kind of new family for her.
Lud is a pharmacology professor specialising in sleep and its induction, and while he spends his days at the university Alma is left home alone, unable to stop thinking about him. When he starts researching poison gas, he doesn't tell her about it. His struggle with his lofty ideals grows ever more desperate – for he can't get Gerhard, the man alongside whom he fought in the First World War, out of his head.
Taking us on a journey from the days of the German empire to National Socialism, the early days of the GDR and post-war West Germany, Jo Lendle's scintillating novel is the story of a family falling apart, of guilt, of the meaning of science, and of the subtle difference between sleep, anaesthesia and death. It is the story of a German family – which just so happens to be his own.
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Marketing Information
English sample translation available
Endorsements
Chosen by New Books in German A Kind of Family - New Books in Gemran
Author Biography
Jo Lendle was born in 1968. After studying cultural education and animation culturelle, he joined the German Literature Institute in Leipzig, edited the literary magazine Edit and has been a visiting professor and lecturer at several universities. He was awarded the Leipzig Promotion Prize for Literature in 1997. Since January 2014 he is head of the Hanser publishing house.
Penguin Random House Verlagsgruppe GmbH
The Penguin Random House Verlagsgruppe is part of the international publishing group Penguin Random House, a division of the media group Bertelsmann, with around 900 employees at its locations in Munich, Gütersloh and Berlin. The Penguin Random House Verlagsgruppe currently comprises 47 publishing houses that publish fiction, children's and youth books, non-fiction, theology, guidebooks, audio books and e-books. They publish around 200 new titles every month, covering a broad spectrum from high-quality entertainment, modern and classical literature, children's and youth books, guidebooks, life assistance and religion to a broad range of non-fiction. Authors include international stars such as George R.R. Martin or Stephen King; well-known names of world literature, including Nobel Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro, Salman Rushdie, and Walter Kempowski; as well as bestselling authors such as Dörte Hansen, Jonas Jonasson, Charlotte Link and Maja Lunde; popular children's and young adult authors such as Ingo Siegner, Ute Krause and Christopher Paolini; strong contemporary voices such as Georg Büchner Prize winner Terézia Mora, Juli Zeh and Saša Stanišic as well as great personalities such as former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, or the former First Lady of the USA Michelle Obama.
View all titlesBibliographic Information
- Publisher/Imprint Penguin Random House Verlagsgruppe / Penguin Verlag
- Publication Date August 2021
- ISBN/Identifier 9783328601944
- Publication Country or regionGermany
- FormatHardback
- Pages368
- ReadershipGeneral
- Publish StatusPublished
- Original Language TitleEine Art Familie
- Copyright Year2021
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