Uwe's mortally wounded brother haunted the Timm family both during and after the Second World War. The devastating destruction of Germany and its society ensured the wartime generation were unable to face the new world order dominated by the victors.
Uew Timm, an established modern German writer, delayed writing about his brother from fragments of a wartime diary until his parents passed away and he was free to revisit the effect of the German totalitarian state facing the Soviet totalitarian system. Timm was invited to Russia after the war to a German speaking Russian book club where he witnessed the wartime devastationfirst hand. German POWs were abused by Russian and american captors alike.
Uwe Timm exorcises the ghosts of wartime Germany in this short memoir of domestic drama mirroring the German catastrophe.