Sanderling

(Hardback)

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Rang was a Protestant pastor stationed near Poznan in modern-day Poland, then part of Prussia. The church, which he subsequently abandoned, had a mission to 'Germanise' the local population. Weber draws parallels between this apparently benign ambition and the subsequent murderous impulses of the third Reich, although a definitive portrait of her ancestor keeps eluding her. After his apostasy he became friends with several great early-twentieth-century thinkers, including Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Martin Buber and Walter Benjamin, with whom he hoped to create a movement devoted to world peace. Rang's son - Weber's grandfather - became a Nazi. Weber places the story of a grandfather she never met, because he refused to acknowledge his son's illegitimate daughter, alongside that of his father to create a travel diary through time, reaching back to understand her ancestors. With literary and philosophical references including Sontag, Sebald and Nietzsche, Weber, one of Germany's leading contemporary authors, combines her family history with a broader examination of ethics and morality, culminating in a beautiful evocation of All Saints Day in Warsaw.

Author Bio

Anne Weber is an author, and a translator into both French and German. She studied in Paris and has worked for several publishers. She has written a dozen books, each in a German and French version. Her book Epic Annette has been translated into 15 languages and won the 2020 German Book Prize. She has also been awarded the Annette-von-Droste-Hlshoff-Preis and the Joseph-Breitbach-Preis.

Neil Blackadder translates prose and drama from German and French. His translations have been staged in London, New York and other cities, and he has received grants from the NEA, PEN, and the Howard Foundation.