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The
German Officer's Boy
Harlan Greene
Terrace Books
Prelude to Kristallnacht: desire and duty collide in a dangerous
love story
What really happened that afternoon in
November 1938, when the young Polish Jew walked into the German
embassy in Paris and shots rang out? The immediate consequence
was concrete: Nazis in Germany retaliated with the "Night
of Broken Glass," recognized as the beginning of the Holocaust.
Lost and overlooked in the aftermath is the arresting story of
Herschel Grynszpan, the confused teenager whose murder of Ernst
vom Rath was used to justify Kristallnacht.
In this historical novel, award-winning writer Harlan Greene
may be the first author to take the Polish Jew at his word. Historians
have tried to explain away Herschel Grynszpan's claim that he
was involved in a love affair with vom Rath; Greene, instead,
traces the lives of the underprivileged and persecuted Herschel
Grynszpan and the wealthy German diplomat Ernst vom Rath as they
move inevitably towards their ill-fated affair. In spare, vivid,
and compelling prose, Greene imagines their world, their relationship,
and their last horrific encounter, as they tried to wrest love
and meaning from a world that would itself soon disappear in
a whirlwind of disaster and madness.
"In the room he heard a shout. Of
joy? Recognition? . . . He flung the paper down and ran, pushing
the door open, ready to shout, but stopped when he saw the blood
on the carpet and the pale blond man thrashing on the floor.
And then there was the boy. Never before had Nagorka seen such
an expression. The young man looked up, distraught and horrified
from beneath his tousled hair and dark brows, his eyes circles
of fear. The gun fell from his hand."&3151;excerpt from
The German Officer's Boy
"A highly original and compassionate account of how
the fires of a forbidden love engulfed Europe. Harlan Greene
has brought to life 'the boy who started World War II' in a headlong
narrative both tender and terrifying."
&3151;Katherine Govier
Harlan Greene, the son of Holocaust survivors, is the
author of several books of nonfiction and the novels Why We
Never Danced the Charleston and What the Dead Remember,
winner of the Lambda Literary Award. He lives in Charleston,
South Carolina.
For more information contact
our publicity manager, phone: (608) 263-0734, email: publicity@uwpress.wisc.edu
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March 2005 LC: 2004023301 PS
216 pp. 5 x 8 1/2
ISBN 0-299-20810-9 Cloth $26.95 t
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