Hello and welcome to this week's Tuesday Teaser. The place where we take a sneaky peek at a book that has caught my eye.
This week we are looking at Kingdom of Twilight by Steven Uhly.
Steven was born in 1964 in Cologne and is of German-Bengali descent, and partially rooted in Spanish culture. He has studied literature, served as the head of an institute in Brazil, and translated poetry and prose from Spanish, Portuguese, and English. He lives in Munich with his family.
The Blurb
One night in autumn 1944, a gunshot echoes through the alleyways of a small town in occupied Poland. An S.S. officer is shot dead by a young Polish Jew, Margarita Ejzenstain. In retaliation, his commander orders the execution of thirty-seven Poles - one for every year of the dead man's life. First hidden by a German couple, Margarita must then flee the brutal advance of the Soviet army with her new-born baby.
So begins a thrilling panorama of intermingled destinies and events that reverberate from that single act of defiance. Kingdom of Twilight follows the lives of Jewish refugees and a German family resettled from Bukovina, as well as a former S.S. officer, chronicling the geographical and psychological dislocation generated by war. A quest for identity and truth takes them from Displaced Persons camps to Lübeck, Berlin, Tel Aviv and New York, as they try to make sense of a changed world, and of their place in it.
Hypnotically lyrical and intensely moving, Steven Uhly's epic novel is a finely nuanced and yet shattering exploration of universal themes: love, hatred, doubt, survival, guilt, humanity and redemption.
The Beginning
One
He had followed a short, haggard man in shabby clothes, who seemed a nasty enough piece of work to betray a few of his fellow countrymen. They'd been hiding in the church, the Pole had said in his thick accent. But we searched every nook and cranny, not a soul there. The Pole just shrugged as if to suggest, It's not my fault you didn't find them. He knew that the German would follow him, even if he suspected that the Pole would try to lead him astray, stall him to stay alive himself, or try some other dirty trick. The German would follow him, lured by the prospect of more Jews, maybe even women, the short man had made vague mention of women as if to avoid overstating his promise. And he was right.
The German followed him through the winding alleys, ignoring the fine rain that fell incessantly on the city like a cold, silk cloth, lending everything a silver-grey sheen, the low, crooked houses, which were narrow and packed together so tightly as if unable ever to get warm. The steeply pitched roofs glistened like molten tar and the uneven cobbles were slippery. The Pole was wearing a pair of old, well-worn shoes, his footsteps made only a muffled scraping on the stones, which was drowned out by the hard pounding of the army boots following in his wake.
The German strode past the furtive windows with the assuredness of an untouchable...
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An interesting beginning to this book. I think it will build into an intense narrative. What do you think?
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