Library for the War-Wounded
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3 Months Free
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Library for the War-Wounded
Narrated by:
Kristin Atherton
Buy Now for £12.24
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Narrated by:
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Kristin Atherton
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By:
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Monika Helfer
The internationally bestselling novel—a daughter’s portrait of her WWII veteran father, assembled from shards of memory.
We called him Vati, Dad. Not Papa. He thought it sounded modern. He wanted to present himself to us, and through us, as a man in tune with the modern age. A man who could be read as having a different past.
Inspired by the author's family history, Library for the War-Wounded transports readers to the aftermath of World War II, uncovering the life of Helfer's father, Josef. Born with the stigma of illegitimacy, he found solace in books, and his education was eventually funded by the Catholic Church. Drafted into the Wehrmacht, he witnessed the horrors of the Eastern Front and returned from the war an amputee. He married his nurse and brought his family to the high, idyllic slopes of the Austrian Alps, where he took a position as manager of a convalescent home for war-wounded.
Josef was a man of many mysteries. To his daughter Monika, none was greater than his obsession with the home's unlikely and remarkable library, his great treasure and comfort as the country barrels away from the memory of war. He will stop at nothing to save it—even when it tears apart his family.
Beautifully restrained and compressed, Library for the War-Wounded turns lived experience into great literature by confronting the universal question: Can we ever truly know our parents?
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Critic reviews
Helfer’s introspective remembrances of her childhood, complete with anecdotal narratives of her relatives and glimpses of the love shared by her parents, breathe life into the characters’ simple moments of joy amid times of hardship. Helfer’s fans will appreciate her searching perspective on her father.
A clear portrait of the unrelenting, continuing legacy of damage suffered by those permanently maimed by war . . . Deciphering the forces that informed her father’s decisions, as well as his various disabilities, leads Helfer to examine their generalized effects on her family as well in this sobering account. Helfer’s unrelieved portrait of a suffering soul wastes nothing on superfluous embellishment.
A poignant, captivating, beautifully woven family saga. As honest as Elena Ferrante, with the folkloric intensity of Téa Obreht.
Beautiful and heartbreaking, and readers will fall in love with Maria. I absolutely loved it.
In Helfer’s spare, subtle English-language debut, an Austrian family is transformed during WWI . . . Helfer brings a great deal of nuance to her exploration of female desire and vulnerability, male power, and community division. This should win the author wider recognition in the U.S.
What distinguishes Last House Before the Mountain from a hundred other family stories is its charm . . . it confides in the reader intimately.
A masterclass in literary compression. In just a short span of pages, Helfer brings a whole world of wonder, loss and deep, deep longing to indelible life. How lucky we are that her work is finally available in English.
Generations of family secrets and unrequited love are braided with restraint and compassion in this moving story of a woman's longing. Drawing from the wreckage of war and poverty, Monika Helfer expertly weaves this entrancing tale of one woman's struggle to build a life of love and dignity.
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