German Lesson

Title: German Lesson
Author: Lenz, Siegfried
ISBN: 9780811222013
Publisher: New Directions
Published: 2021
Binding: Quality
Language: English
Condition: New


Fiction 1210862

Publisher Description:

In this quiet and devastating novel about the rise of fascism, Siggi Jepsen, incarcerated as a juvenile delinquent, is assigned to write a routine German lesson on the "The Joys of Duty." Overfamiliar with these joys, Siggi sets down his life since 1943, a decade earlier, when as a boy he watched his father, a constable, doggedly carry out orders from Berlin to stop a well-known Expressionist artist from painting and to seize all his "degenerate" work. Soon Siggi is stealing the paintings to keep them safe from his father. "I was trying to find out," Lenz says, "where the joys of duty could lead a people."

Translated from the German by Ernst Kaiser and Eithne Wilkins