In My Grandfather’s Shadow

Reviews

Brave ... full of insights and good research. 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. A remarkable cross-pollination of memoir, psychology and history in which the author comes to grips with being the granddaughter of a Nazi general. 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. 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. This is a moving and powerful memoir that illuminates the extraordinary power of unprocessed trauma as it passes through generations, and how when it is faced it can be healed. [A] remarkable memoir .... It's a powerful investigation into the individual personal cost that results from wider history, and the ways in which inherited guilt and trauma can leave scars across generations. This is an absolutely extraordinary book. In peeling back the layers of her family history, Angela Findlay reveals a vast, hidden European story that few nations have ever been brave enough to confront.

A page turner of the highest calibre! Meticulously researched, searingly honest and beautifully written, this timely book is a salient reminder of how intergenerational relationships connect threads between past and present.
The author skillfully excavates her grandfather's life putting the family puzzle together piece by piece to create a forensic and fascinating portrait of the past. Her book gives new meaning to the prescient words of psychoanalyst, Roger Woolger: 'It is the responsibility of the living to heal the dead. Otherwise their unfinished business will continue to play out in our fears, phobias and illnesses.

What do you do if you are British and German and tormented by a vague sense of guilt which is ruining your life? The answer, in Angela Findlay's case, is you track down your WWII German general grandfather, who waged war on Russia. In a fast-moving story told with great feeling and solid scholarship, Angela Findlay confronts questions of good and evil, generational guilt and reconciliation ... This is a fine book: moving, serious and told with compelling verve. The moral is that honest remembrance of the past helps people live better futures. Expand reviews