Inge's War
Svenja O'Donnell
Ebury, €21
Half Irish, half German, journalist Svenja O'Donnell grew up in Paris almost completely unaware of her family's German past and heritage. Upon returning to the now-Russian city of Kaliningrad, the city three generations of her family fled when it was Königsberg, Svenja witnesses her grandmother Inge crying for the first time. Thus begins a wartime memoir that not only charts the survival of a family but bravely examines the inherited horrors of a conflict that scarred a nation. Through her grandmother's recollections and her own painstaking research, a narrative emerges of a family's survival and the ultimate cost of that survival.
O'Donnell writes with an arresting clarity and a deep empathy for the women who are ordinarily forgotten from history; the women whose lives are destroyed by the trauma of war and silenced by the peace that comes in its aftermath. – Becky Long
Looking for Eliza
Leaf Arbuthnot
Orion, £14.99
A widowed writer attempts to reconnect with the life she has fallen out of since her husband's death and discovers an unlikely but essential connection with a young student who cannot seem to find her place in the world. While set against the tumultuous and fractious backdrop of the Brexit referendum, Arbuthnot's novel is nonetheless timeless in the most essential way, focusing as it does on the power of friendship and the deep, resonant impact of loneliness. Arbuthnot's language is rich and sonorous, bringing a lyrical focus to innocuous domestic moments as her readers are drawn deeper and deeper into the inner lives of her characters. Nothing is simple for Ada and Eliza, precisely because humans are inherently complex. An arresting and evocative work that skilfully reflects on the two pillars between which we all live our lives: love and grief. – Becky Long
