Children of the Sun

I read this story full of disbelief, holding my breath and my chest tightening. This dark story about the British neo-nazi movement and homosexuality was way out of my comfort zone.

I swallowed a few times while reading and didn’t know if I wanted to continue. A fourteen-year-old boy trying to hook up with an older man. The next pages a confrontation between Nazi skinheads and Black men seen from the skinheads POV. Teens shouting S*** H*** and N***** go home. So incredibly repulsive.

While reading this story, I didn’t have any peace. I’m not someone who gets triggered easily but this was just ... let’s say it needs a lot of trigger warnings! It’s gritty and dark and there was so much racism and homophobia, I almost got nauseous sometimes. I’m still not sure what point the author wanted to make with this book. The writing was okay, even beautiful at times but the content? I need to have more than just okay or beautiful writing. Not chapter after chapter with events that disgust me. So, I tried and to be honest, I skimmed the second part of the book.

Children of the Sun was originally released in 2010 and is a double narrative set within the neo-nazi movement of the 70s/80s and also in the modern day when a would be screenwriter becomes obsessed with the story of a gay neo-nazi & what became of him. The writing is often wonderful with skilled evocations of both the horror and at times banal actions of the far right. The main flaw within the book however is that Schaefer often succumbs to a soap opera rather than a harsh reality which can jar with the subject.
(Copy provided by Netgalley in return for an honest review)

1970. Fourteen-year-old Tony is seduced by the skinhead movement, sucked into a world of racist violence and bizarre ritual. It's a milieu in which he must hide his homosexuality, in which every encounter is explosively risky.

2003. James a young TV researcher, becomes obsessed with Neo Nazis and British Movement activist Nicky Crane in particular. As he becomes immersed in research, he begins to receive threatening phone calls,

Two different worlds, two different stories. A book that will stay with me for some time.