We Germans - Alexander Starritt

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Résumé :
In the throes of the Second World War, young Meissner, a college student with dreams of becoming a scientist, is drafted into the German army and sent to the Eastern Front. But soon his regiment collapses in the face of the onslaught of the Red Army, hell-bent on revenge in its race to Berlin. Many decades later, now an old man reckoning with his past, Meissner pens a letter to his grandson explaining his actions, his guilt as a Nazi participator, and the difficulty of life after war. Found among his effects after his death, the letter is at once a thrilling story of adventure and a questing rumination on the moral ambiguity of war. In his years spent fighting the Russians and attempting afterward to survive the Gulag, Meissner recounts a life lived in perseverance and atonement. Wracked with shame--both for himself and for Germany--the grandfather explains his dark rationale, exults in the courage of others, and blurs the boundaries of right and wrong--...

Biographie:
Alexander Starritt has written for a wide variety of publications, including Newsweek, The Guard­ian, the Daily Mail, and the Times Literary Supplement. He is also a translator of German and has translated the works of Franz Kafka and Stefan Zweig, among others, into English. Born to a Scottish father and a German mother, he grew up in the northeast of Scotland and lives in London.