![]() "This is a history that is often poignant, sometimes heartening, and never other than intimate. ![]() His account of the house is a superb work of social history, told with tremendous narrative verve." - The Sunday Times (UK) "By tracing the lives of the different families who lived there, Harding sheds fresh light on the German 20th century, a tale of war, spies, murder and political, racial and social division. "A fascinating window on a tumultuous period." - Financial Times (UK) "A personal and imaginative yet overlong perspective on German history." - Kirkus "This personal saga centered on a family home will appeal to enthusiasts of German history, especially post-World War II division and reunification." - Library Journal The Times (UK) New Statesman (UK) Daily Express (UK) Commonwealth magazine Breathtaking in scope and intimate in its detail, The House by the Lake is a groundbreaking and revelatory new history of Germany, told over a tumultuous century through the story of a small wooden house. The house had weathered storms, fires and abandonment, witnessed violence, betrayals and murders, and had withstood the trauma of a world war and the dividing of a nation. All had made the house their home, and all but one had been forced out. ![]() Slowly he began to piece together the lives of the five families who had lived there: a wealthy landowner, a prosperous Jewish family, a renowned composer, a widow and her children, a Stasi informant. It now belonged to the government, and as Harding began to inquire about whether the house could be saved, he unearthed secrets that had lain hidden for decades. But the house had changed, and when Harding returned once again nearly twenty years later, it was about to be demolished. The trip was his grandmother's chance to remember her childhood sanctuary as it was. It had been her "soul place," she said - a holiday home for her and her family, but also a refuge - until the 1930s, when the Nazis' rise to power forced them to leave. In the summer of 1993, Thomas Harding traveled to Germany with his grandmother to visit a small house by a lake on the outskirts of Berlin. A groundbreaking and revelatory new history of Germany, told over a tumultuous century through the story of a small wooden house.
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