Product description

T. was seventeen years old when his father, a respected doctor in a small town in southern Germany, took his own life in 1971. He didn't die alone; a younger lover was with him. A family trauma—and a public scandal. The world of the long-established family crumbled. Left behind were two adolescent children, a forty-year-old widow, and the elderly mother, who tended the grave and began to drink.

It takes many decades before T. confronts the facts and recounts his father's suicide, how it came about, and what happened afterward—a poignant account revolving around existential questions: What is home, what is family? What defines a life? What separates freedom from irresponsibility, and what role does society play in rural areas? Through this personal tragedy, a reflection of German mentality over the last fifty years is revealed: Thomas Medicus movingly and powerfully tells the story of a childhood and adolescence in the 1950s and 60s and the time that followed, of a life-altering trauma. A profound glimpse into the German psyche—and a deeply moving, personal story.

biography

Thomas Medicus, born in 1953 in Middle Franconia, studied German literature, political science, and art history in Marburg/Lahn. He initially worked as a freelance journalist, then as an editor at various daily newspapers. Since September 2003, he has been the features correspondent for the Frankfurter Rundschau in Berlin. Since the mid-1980s, he has undertaken extensive travels in Central and Eastern Europe.

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