Love in the Third Reich
An astute character sketch of three individuals and their love lives in Nazi Germany
A completely original story, told from the inside, capturing the feelings, situations, decisions and dramas of everyday life during World War II.
Laura Susijn
The Susijn Agency Ltd
laura@thesusijnagency.com
Meet Georg, Klara and Lore. Their lives are very different: Georg is an ordinary, reluctant, soldier who falls in love with Lore when the German youth are helping bring in the harvest. Klara ends up working for the Lebensborn organisation and Lore becomes her chauffeur. Their three stories meander like snakes through the twentieth century, each with its own timeline, sometimes intertwined, sometimes separate. All three experience the Third Reich, with different degrees of engagement, passion and understanding. All three are moved by the Fates.
With and through them we experience the passion of first love, and the misguided idealism of a youth growing up in a totalitarian regime. Tossed back and forth between innocence and the will to survive, betrayal and loyalty, they survive the horrors of the Second World War. Driessen is a fabulous writer and tells a timeless, fast-paced and unsentimental story.
Stylistically this novel is recognisable as a true Driessen; a style often described as artistic, earthy, andante, sentences that force you to slow down your reading pace. A masterful narrator. Driessen confronts his characters with large dilemmas, as in a Greek tragedy.
NRC
