100 Books Like We Germans

Heck’s plain-spoken memoir of his indoctrination into Nazism as a young boy and his time in the Hitler Youth and the German military is powerful and honest. Long after he’d left Germany as an adult, Heck continued to grapple with his own complicity in the regime and his fervent beliefs in its goals. The Hitler Youth was particularly adept at tapping into young boys’ yearning to be heroes. Heck explains the lingering effects of his indoctrination, noting that, “Despite our monstrous sacrifice and the appalling misuse of our idealism, there will always be the memory of unsurpassed power, the intoxication of fanfares and flags proclaiming our new age.” This was a fascinating read for me personally, given the similarities between Heck’s experiences and those of my father, and it was an invaluable resource as I wrote my own novel. 

Based on a true story, this novel focuses on Anna and Otto Quangel, a working-class married couple who begin to resist the Nazis after losing their only son in the fighting. The novel is dense, immersive, and rich with characters, ranging from rabid Nazi members to those opposing the murderous goals of the party and those in the middle trying to survive the regime. “Most people today are afraid, basically everyone, because they’re all up to something forbidden, one way or another, and are worried someone will get wind of it,” Quangel thinks to himself. Fallada wrote the novel in just twenty-four days while in a mental institution, and he died before it was published. A compelling read with characters that linger in the imagination.

In this devastating collection, Böll explores the emotional aftershocks of war. German soldiers grapple with the desire to flee, to understand what they’ve lost in the fighting, and to make even fleeting connections with each other and the civilians they meet in the bombed out cities and towns. In “Stranger, Bear Word to the Spartans We…” a wounded soldier only gradually comes to realize the extent of his injuries. The weight of the war works its way through all the stories in one way or another, even when the narrators don’t expressly refer to combat or the regime.

Another epistolary novel, this time about a Hitler Youth boy who finds himself working as Hitler’s personal artist. Through a strange series of events, young Tobias Koertig must prowl the streets of Berlin, draw pictures of the devastation from the Allied air raids and bring the drawings back to Hitler as he cowers in his bunker. Tobias is desperately in love with Zenzi, a young Jewish girl he’s known since his childhood. Part love story, part war story, the novel is dark, strange, and often funny, affirming the beauty and unpredictability of life under even the most terrible circumstances. I had a hard time putting this book down.

There is a dark undertow to this book that I didn’t detect in its early pages. Once I was a third of the way through, I was hooked. It’s the story of Wendy, a trans sex worker living through a bracing Winnipeg winter, but it’s also a uniquely queer examination of trauma and abuse offset by the value of family and community.

Her chosen family is produced by circumstance, but it grows its own unique qualities. Meanwhile, her attempts to have a relationship with her father eschew cliché as she reimagines that connection on her own terms. She’s bright and gloomy at once, humorous, curious, and imperfect. Her story is a visceral one; she stuck with me well after I finished it.

I absolutely love the magical, fantastical, and treacherous world that Brand Mull created in this book. The story of Kendra and her brother Seth being shipped off to their grandparents, who they hardly know, in a very strange place they've never been and rules that don't make sense, creates that perfect recipe for discovery, mishap, and victory.

We've seen this format before, but this time it feels different. I especially love the way the siblings work together, each with special gifts that get them both in and out of trouble along the way, not to mention the way the creatures in this book are portrayed with creativity and a little darkness that's very unexpected and incredibly entertaining. 

I read all of Blackwood’s novels and stories when researching my first biography, on the life of Caroline Blackwood. This is the one that stayed with me, Blackwood’s semi-autobiographical novella of Dunmartin Manor, housing three generations of Websters and Dunmartins. From the cold cruelty of the narrator’s great grandmother, to the fairy-like madness of her grandmother, and the tragedy of her fun-loving but suicidal Aunt Lavinia, all seem like extensions of the mansion—a decaying, grand old house, freezing in the winter, sweltering in the summer, and given to flooding. Like the house itself, the characters are trapped by the weight of their own Anglo-Irish, aristocratic history. No conflagration here, except for the cremation of Great Granny Webster.

A non-fiction recommendation this time, and a recent release.

Hennigan’s essay collection is a beautifully written account of the final years, and opaque recollections, of her grandmother Phil, who spent much of her life in various psychiatric institutions.

I have been interested in this theme for years – Ireland, in the first decades after independence from Britain, has some of the highest rates of citizen incarceration in the world: prisons, borstals, orphanages, magdalen laundries, and psychiatric hospitals both provided employment and regulation and also kept a whole population of ‘problem’ people out of sight).

This fact, and its repercussions in culture today, fascinate me, and Hennigan’s gentle and loving consideration of Phil’s trauma, loneliness, mania, and the maternal lineage it involves (her own mother was institutionalized) is also an angry illustration of just how badly women and the working class have been treated here.

Sadia Shepard is the child of a white Protestant father from Colorado and a Muslim mother from Pakistan, who grew up outside Boston. In her visionary and moving memoir, she embarks on a search for her Bene Israel roots when her maternal grandmother, who she thought was a Muslim from Pakistan like everyone else in their family, tells her that her real name is Rachel Jacobs.

She hears about the Bene Israel community and reads about their origins. It's a fascinating account of a cross-cultural childhood, a journey to India to explore her grandmother’s family tree, discovering the secrets of her grandparents’ marriage, encountering the complicated history of India and Pakistan and the Partition, and at the same time, making sense of her complex influences and legacy. The author undertakes journeys on several levels that delve into her family history, her ancestors, her grandmother’s story, and her own identity.

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This book has truly beautiful art by Poonam Mistry. I find Indian and Hindu culture fascinating and this book brings it to you through the eyes of a child (or two children I should say as it’s about siblings). There is a glossary of Hindu terms in the back which I do appreciate. It is written almost as an Indian tribute to Goodnight Moon which is of course a classic.