The Anna Klein Story Continues
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Several years ago, I was invited as a speaker at a lecture when an audience member told me about an American author who had written a crime novel about the Wiesbaden Central Collecting Point. My first reaction? Frustration. Someone had beaten me to it—because I had been planning the exact same thing: turning my academic research on the Monuments Men into a compelling crime story. The facts were already there, carefully researched. I was simply too late.
But then I read the book by C. F. Yetmen. And I have to admit: I genuinely liked Anna Klein and her work at the Central Collecting Point.
So I reached out to Canan. As it turned out, she was already working on the sequel and asked me to proofread it—not only in terms of historical accuracy, but also to assess whether she had convincingly embedded the story in the Wiesbaden of the late 1940s. After all, the book had been written far away from its actual setting. This gave me the opportunity to read, even before publication, how Anna and Cooper’s story continues. In this volume, we also meet Oskar for the first time—a war-displaced boy without parents who becomes an important figure in Anna’s story.
The release of the third volume of the Anna Klein trilogy coincided with the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Public readings were not possible, so the author organized an online book launch on Facebook—and asked me to contribute a series of video features from original locations in Wiesbaden. I was, of course, happy to take part, presenting places such as the Wiesbaden CCP and Anna’s fictional residence. You can watch the video of the book launch here.
And now, Canan has continued the story—focusing in particular on Oskar. In June, The Pretense of Memory will be released, and I am very much looking forward to this next installment.
What It’s About
In West Germany in 1958, the economic miracle is in full swing, and it seems as though the crimes of the Third Reich have been entirely forgotten—or misremembered. But Oskar Gruenewald has not forgotten.
An idealist despite his traumatic past as a twice-orphaned refugee, he enrolls in law school in the hope of bringing about some form of justice. Soon, however, he realizes that the system is working against him.
A chance encounter with Romy Erlanger—a mysterious artist with a penchant for provocation—draws Oskar into a hidden world and confronts him with crimes—and perpetrators—that no one wants to remember. As his carefully constructed memories begin to unravel, he is forced to question whether they are, in fact, an illusion.
Oskar must decide whether it is worth risking his own future to break the rules in order to set things right—if that is even possible. But sometimes, it takes a certain kind of creativity to make people pay attention.
An excerpt from the 2021 book launch (Volume 3 of the Anna Klein trilogy) can be found here.
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