In My Grandfather’s Shadow

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

In 1987, Angela Findlay walked into a prison and instantly but inexplicably felt at home. For years she had wrestled with a sense of 'badness' within her. But working with prisoners was just the beginning of her search for answers that took her to Nazi Germany and the life of her dead grandfather, who, it emerged, was a decorated general on the Eastern front. In a rare confluence of memoir, psychology and historical detective story, this is Findlay's account of her unflinching quest for the truth about her German family, one that breaks through the silence surrounding many of the Second World War's perpetrators.

In My Grandfather's Shadow explores the heritability of unresolved experiences, questions deeply held perceptions of good and bad, and uncovers the lesser-known history of the war's losers, a post-war culture of apology and atonement, and the lingering legacy of shame. Using her own family story to explore an episode in history that continues to appal and fascinate, Findlay reveals that it is possible not only for the scars of trauma to be handed down through generations, but also for them to be healed.

© Angela Findlay 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2022

Critics Review

  • A remarkable cross-pollination of memoir, psychology and history in which the author comes to grips with being the granddaughter of a Nazi general.

    i Paper

  • Brave … full of insights and good research.

    Times Literary Supplement

  • A compelling journey through guilt and shame that asks fundamental and painful questions about the extent of a family member’s participation in one of the biggest crimes of the 20th century.

    Derek Niemann, author of A Nazi in the Family

  • In My Grandfather’s Shadow is an extraordinary book. Beautifully written, poignant and acutely perceptive; endlessly thought-provoking and challenging. From the nature of wickedness to the phenomenon of epigenetics, it is also an extremely powerful and different way of seeing the vast and terrible tides of history.

    Sinclair McKay, author of Berlin, Dresden, and The Secret Life of Bletchley Park

  • Seeking to untangle the complexities of her own life, the author goes in search of a WW2 German general – the grandfather she never knew. The outcome is a powerful and at times painfully honest story that will touch readers at many levels.

    Julia Boyd, author of Travellers in the Third Reich and A Village in the Third Reich

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