THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PYJAMAS John Boyne (johnboyne.com) Illustrated by Oliver Jeffers (www.oliverjeffers.com) Doubleday (www.penguinrandomhouse.co.uk) £14.99 Bruno is nine years old when his father’s job forces the family to pack up their beautiful Berlin home and move to the desolate Polish countryside. This is Out-With, a cold and unpleasant place where neither Bruno nor […]
Read More THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PYJAMAS by John BoyneTHE BOY AT THE TOP OF THE MOUNTAIN John Boyne (johnboyne.com) Doubleday (www.randomhouse.co.uk) £12.99 Although Pierrot Fischer’s father didn’t die in the Great War, his mother Émilie always maintained it was the war that killed him. It is 1936 and seven-year-old Pierrot Fischer lives in Paris with his French mother, his German father having drunk […]
Read More THE BOY AT THE TOP OF THE MOUNTAIN by John BoyneJAKOB’S COLOURS Lindsay Hawdon (lhawdon.co.uk) Hodder & Stoughton (www.hodder.co.uk) £14.99 Jakob is barely eight-years old, and he is running for his life, searching for shelter in a world that has turned against him. It is 1944, and Jakob is a half-gypsy, the oldest child of a Romany father and an English mother, living in German-occupied […]
Read More JAKOB’S COLOURS by Lindsay HawdonA MAN LIES DREAMING Lavie Tidhar (lavietidhar.wordpress.com) Hodder & Stoughton (www.hodder.co.uk) £18.99 In another time and place, a man lies dreaming. National Socialism is routed at the 1933 elections by Communism, and its leadership exiled from Germany. Sentenced to a concentration camp, Adolf Hitler escapes and makes his way to London where, under his old […]
Read More A MAN LIES DREAMING by Lavie TidharLOOK WHO’S BACK Timur Vermes Translated by Jamie Bulloch MacLehose Press (maclehosepress.com) £15.00 Adolf Hitler opens his eyes to find himself lying in the middle of a piece of waste ground in Berlin. The last few days – his final days in the Bunker – are a blur and it doesn’t take long for Hitler […]
Read More LOOK WHO’S BACK by Timur VermesTHE UNDERTAKING Audrey Magee (audreymagee.com) Atlantic Books (atlantic-books.co.uk) £12.99 In order to temporarily escape the madness of the Eastern Front, German soldier Peter Faber turns to marriage. It is a marriage of convenience, the bride one Katharina Spinell, chosen from a catalogue, a girl he has never met. The benefits are mutual: ten days’ honeymoon […]
Read More THE UNDERTAKING by Audrey MageeTHE VIOLENT CENTURY Lavie Tidhar (lavietidhar.wordpress.com) Hodder & Stoughton (www.hodder.co.uk) £18.99 Released: 24 October 2013 In the summer of 1932, German scientist Dr Joachim Vomacht powers up a device that will change the world; the wave generated by this device will touch every person on the planet. Not everyone will come through the experience unchanged. […]
Read More THE VIOLENT CENTURY by Lavie TidharRATLINES Stuart Neville (stuartneville.com) Harvill Secker (www.vintage-books.co.uk/about-us/harvill-secker) £12.99 It is 1963 and Ireland is preparing for an historic visit from US president, John F. Kennedy. The death of the third foreign national, a German businessman, in the space of a handful of days could threaten not only the presidential visit, but the relationship between Ireland […]
Read More RATLINES by Stuart NevilleTHE CHURCH OF SAINTS CYRIL AND METHODIUS RESSLOVA PRAGUE As featured in: HHhH by Laurent Binet Date of visit: 5th September 2012 Price of Adult Admission: Kč75 (≅£2.50) When I started Reader Dad early in 2011, the plan was to stick to the book reviews and leave it at that. Now, a handful of interviews […]
Read More TRAVELOGUE: The Church of Saints Cyril & Methodius (HHhH)HHHH Laurent Binet Translated by Sam Taylor Harvill Secker (www.vintage-books.co.uk/about-us/harvill-secker) £16.99 Released: 3rd May 2012 Laurent Binet’s debut novel, the oddly-named HHhH, appealed to me on two different levels: first of all, as an avid consumer of any and all information concerning the Third Reich and the Holocaust, and secondly, as a lover of the […]
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Reader Dad - Book Reviews 