Book : The House By The Lake One House, Five Families, And A

-Titulo Original : The House By The Lake One House, Five Families, And A Hundred Years Of German History

-Fabricante :

Picador

-Descripcion Original:

Longlisted for the Orwell PrizeNamed a Best Book of the Year by The Times (London), New Statesman (London), Daily Express (London), and Commonweal MagazineIn the summer of 1993, Thomas Harding traveled to Germany with his grandmother to visit a small house by a lake on the outskirts of Berlin. It had been a holiday home for her and her family, but in the 1930s, she had been forced to flee to England as the Nazis swept to power. Nearly twenty years later, the house was government property and soon to be demolished. It was Harding’s legacy, one that had been loved, abandoned, fought over a house his grandmother had desired until her death. Could it be saved? And should it?When Harding began to make inquiries, he unearthed secrets that had lain hidden for decades about the lives of the five families who had lived there: a wealthy landowner, a prosperous Jewish family, a renowned composer, a widow and her children, and a Stasi informant. The house had been the site of domestic bliss and of contentment, but also of terrible grief and tragedy. As its story began to take shape, Harding realized that there was a chance to save it, but in doing so, he would have to resolve his own family’s feelings towards their former homeland and a hatred handed down through the generations. Review Fascinating revelations abound . . . [A] powerful book. The EconomistA fascinating window on a tumultuous period. Financial TimesThe House by the Lake meticulously chronicles two linked feats of reclamation: the authors reconstruction of the houses life and times, and his quest to restore the building itself. . . . This is a tale of multiple dispossessions, but also of adaptation and resiliency. Julia M. Klein, The Boston GlobeAn epic, fact-filled, multi-voiced saga told with pace, verve, and warmth, and rich in fascinating revelations. . . . Masterful. Minneapolis Star TribuneIn his absorbing personal history, The House by the Lake: One House, Five Families, and a Hundred Years of German History, Harding recounts, with a measured pathos, the experiences of a succession of tenants. It is a story of aspiration, fleeting joy, escape and the small-scale dramas of domestic life. . . . For all the political and personal upheaval detailed here, Harding writes with a restraint thats all the more impressive given his personal connection to the material. . . . Harding makes excellent use of eyewitness testimony, interviews with Gross Glienicke villagers, family papers, government archives and other documents, as he moves across a century of time. NewsdayBreathtaking in scope and intimate in its detail, Hardings book is a groundbreaking and revelatory history of Germany, told over nearly a century through the story of a small wooden house. Anne Hammock, Florida Times-Union Book of the WeekBy tracing the lives of the different families who lived there, Harding sheds fresh light on the German 20th century, a tale of war, spies, murder and political, racial and social division. His account of the house is a superb work of social history, told with tremendous narrative verve. The Sunday Times (London)This is a history that is often poignant, sometimes heartening, and never other than intimate. . . . This is a gentle but rewarding book, carefully tuned into the marginal voices recorded in the history of one small house by a lake. Clare Mulley, The Spectator (UK)Diamond-brilliant . . . If a webcam had been left on at number 101 Gross Glienicke for 90 years, the record could not have been more vivid or revelatory. Hardings research, from eyewitness accounts to the files of ministries, is jaw-dropping. This is an extraordinary book. Five Stars. Sunday Express (UK)This emblem of tyranny [the Berlin Wall] was just another fact of life for those living in its shadow. And that is, perhaps, the most important lesson of Hardings book. History, which we learn about as a series of ideological abstractions, is l