The Scrapbook

byHeather Clark

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Inspired by a real discovery, this is the story of a life-changing seduction in the long shadow of European history, for readers of Deborah Levy, Lauren Elkin and Jenny Erpenbeck.

'A singular portrait of intoxicating young love' AUBE REY LESCURE

'You wouldn't be able to put it down' SAMANTHA ROSE HILL

For years after I tried to tell myself that what happened between us was hardly worth remembering.

Harvard, 1996. Anna is about to graduate when she meets Christoph, a German student visiting campus. They only spend a week together – discussing art, ideas and history – but it is long enough for Anna to fall desperately in love. Anna begins to visit Christoph in Germany. As she tries to understand the young, elegant man who fascinates her, he reveals his country to her.

Germany is still reckoning with the Holocaust and its pretty new squares and grand facades belie its recent history and the war’s destruction. Christoph condemns his country’s actions but remains vague about the part his own grandparents played. Anna’s grandfather, meanwhile, was an American GI who took photos of the end of the war, photos that capture its horror, preserved in a scrapbook only Anna has seen.

Anna wants to believe in Christoph and the future he promises her but as their relationship becomes increasingly unsettling, she must face up to everything she has been unwilling to see, and everything Christoph has chosen to ignore.

'An elegant, unsettling novel about the burden of history and the illusions of love' Sana Krasikov, author of The Patriots

'Heather Clark writes with a rare empathy' Times Literary Supplement
A swiftly-moving, molecularly perceptive, singular portrait of intoxicating young love. Clark captures the psychological nuances and emotional currents of two youthful intellects wrestling with the weight of history and questions of legacy, moral responsibility, and the blinders and dissonance of a complicated romance
Aube Rey Lescure, author of River East, River West

About Heather Clark

Heather Clark is the author of four works of non-fiction, including Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath (published by Jonathan Cape), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the LA Times Book Prize in Biography, and was the winner of the Slightly Foxed Prize and the Truman Capote Prize (awarded by the Iowa Writers’ Workshop). It was a Book of the Year in the Guardian, Daily Telegraph, Times and New York Times. Her work has appeared in publications including the New York Times, Time, Lit Hub, and TLS. She has recently received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the New York Public Library’s Cullman Centre. The Scrapbook is her debut novel.
Details
  • Imprint: Jonathan Cape
  • ISBN: 9781787335424
  • Length: 256 pages
  • Price: £18.99
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