Everyone Has Their Reasons

(Hardback)

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On 7 November 1938, a 17-year-old Polish-German Jew named Herschel Grynszpan entered the German embassy in Paris and shot dead a consular official. Three days later, in supposed response, Jews across Germany were beaten, imprisoned and killed, their homes, shops and synagogues smashed and burned - Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass. Based on the historical record and told through his letters from German prisons, this novel begins in 1936, when Herschel is 15 and fleeing Germany, and continues through his trial.

Reviews

"A tragic, gripping Orwellian tale of an orphan turned assassin in pre-World War II Paris. Based on the true story of the Jewish teen Hitler blamed for Kristallnacht, it's a wild ride through the underside of Europe as the storm clouds of the Holocaust gather. Not to be missed!"
--Terry Bisson, Hugo and Nebula award-winning author of Fire on the Mountain

Author Bio

Joseph Matthews is a former criminal defense lawyer and public defender in San Francisco who engaged in the criminal/political cases of anti-Vietnam War activists, Mission District barrio residents, and prisoners during the California prison rebellions of the 1970s. He taught at the law school of the University of California-Berkeley and is the author of the novel Shades of Resistance, the short story collection The Lawyer Who Blew Up His Desk, and the coauthor of the political analysis Afflicted Powers: Capital and Spectacle in a New Age of War. He lives in San Francisco.