THE BOY AT THE TOP OF THE MOUNTAIN by John Boyne

THE 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 […]

A MAN LIES DREAMING by Lavie Tidhar

A 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 […]

LOOK WHO’S BACK by Timur Vermes

LOOK 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 […]

TRAVELOGUE: The Church of Saints Cyril & Methodius (HHhH)

THE 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 […]

HHHH by Laurent Binet

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 […]

JULIA by Otto de Kat

JULIA Otto de Kat Translated by Ina Rilke Maclehose Press (maclehosepress.com) £12.00 A brief flick through previous entries in this blog will show the reader that I have something of a fascination with the events of the Second World War. Not so much the war itself, but the individual stories that make up the fabric […]