Seiffert's new novel again resonates with her family story, being on the "wrong" side of history. She is from a German family whose grandparents were Nazis. Despite being raised in Britain, the Second World War was always on the table for discussion and her work cleverly distils the huge amount of information she must hold..

This is a multi-perspective narrative set in the countryside near Hamburg as the war concludes. The colossal backdrop, seen through the eyes of Ruth, a Red Cross worker, opens into the lives and perspectives on the aftermath of The Third Reich from both German families and separated families transported here. The horrors, the colossal displacement of men, women and children from their homes and families and what going "home" means for many of them. Russia under Stalin now includes much of Eastern Europe and, for the refugees, despite it being where their families are, is not where they want to return.

As ever Seiffert sees through the glass darkly and brings, for me, a new telling of a much told period of history. Whilst this is set in a short period of time, it is multi-layered slices of life that brings together the quotidian, world politics, resilience and the very worst aspects of humanity. All shown by characters presented substantively however little we saw of them.

I found it absorbing and thought provoking. What more can you want from a novel?

With thanks to #NetGalley and #Virago for the opportunity to read and review

Rachel Seiffert has I believe written four previous novel. Her debut “The Dark Room” was shortlisted for the 2001 Booker Prize. Her next three novels: “Afterwards”, “The Walk Home” and “The Boy In Winter” were all longlisted for the Women’s Prize in 2007, 2015 and 2018 respectively.

So this her fifth novel (and the first I have read – and as it happens due to be published on the same week that the 2025 Women’s Prize longlist is announced) has to be considered as a prize contender, particularly as it returns to the broad themes and setting of her first and last books (the first three novellas connected to Germany and World War II, the last set in 1941 as the Nazis “cleanse” a Ukrainian village). The author herself is fluent in German and English and the book does feature some translated and untranslated German terms and brief dialogue.

A brief foreword sets up the idea of the book

At the start of 1945, up to 850,000 British and American soldiers were arriving at Germany’s western border. Across in the east, one million Soviet troops were closing in on Berlin. Six years of fighting and twelve years of Nazi rule had already displaced millions of civilians – among them were legions of forced labourers, mostly Poles and Ukrainians, brought to Germany from the lands it occupied and put to work in its war industries. As the Allies closed in, upwards of six million workers were still held there, scattered across cities and towns and villages, awaiting war’s end.

The setting is a town in the West of Germany – noteable perhaps only for its factory staffed by workers from Poland and the East (Polacks and Ostarbeiter) – and the book takes place over around a year from March 1945), moving between different third party points of view, of which the initial cast include: Benno – a member of the Hitler Youth and his brother Udo, son of the town policeman;
Hanne – wife of Gustav a labourer - their son Kurt having been wounded on the Eastern Front; Emmy – wife of Arno(ld) the town schoolmaster whose goes along with the Nazi regime to the smallest extent possible, including refusing to let his children Freya and the younger Ursel to join the Hitler Youth; Ruth – son of a Polish Jewish émigré in England who comes to the town as a Red Cross Nurse.

The British Army liberate the factory – rather shocked at the condition of the workers – and quickly turn it into a Displaced Persons camp which rapidly grows over time as more and more Displaced Persons arrive or are sent there (mostly but not entirely from the East, many if not most worried about friends, families, children from whom they have been separated).

And most of the story roughly alternated between the DP camp (often seen via Ruth but with a wider cast of characters – including two children) and the town (as the different townsfolk come to terms or not with their defeat, the British occupation and the presence of the DP camp). Sources of narrative tension and development include: the townfolk waiting for their arrested husbands/fathers or captured/wounded sons to be returned; the DP’s concerns about their missing being added to post Yalta as they realise the British have agreed to return them to their now Russian-occupied home towns; Gustav and Hanne’s dilemma about what to do about a baby who was abandoned near the house by an escaping Ostarbeiter; Ruth’s dilemma as to what to do best both for the two children and for a elderly Pole who translates for her (and sometimes us!).

There is a underlying sense that something mysterious (and likely sinister) has occurred – partly from the town’s memories of a night when a convoy of walking workers (including women) travelled through the town and sirens were sounding – the same night the baby was abandoned; partly from stories Ruth picks up from the DPs and tries to draw to the attention of the British authorities - of people moved on from this and other factories whose whereabouts are unknown; and all seems connected also to a sense of mystery/menace around a deserted water mill above the town.

And two late chapters which switch to different views – one by a British Major who literally stumbles across what has been hidden near the mill, another by the girl who abandoned the baby – confirms what we had largely expected.

Overall I felt this was a very competently written and very worthwhile book – illuminating a large group of people largely written out of history and sensitively dealing with the views of a range of people to the war’s immediate aftermath in English occupied Germany. However, one that is perhaps too conventional in literary terms for my preferences – notwithstanding that I can see it making prize lists (the Walter Scott Prize for 2026 would be one deserved possibility).