The Dark Room: A Novel [Hardcover]

Rachel Seiffert (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2001

A debut novel that retells the history of twentieth-century Germany through the experiences of three ordinary Germans.

Helmut: A boy born with a physical deformity finds work as a photographer’s assistant during the 1930s and captures on film the changing temper of Berlin, the city he loves. But his acute photographic eye never provides him with the power to understand the significance of what he sees through his camera. . . . Lore: In the weeks following Germany’s surrender, a teenage girl whose parents are both in Allied captivity takes her younger siblings on a terrifying, illegal journey through the four zones of occupation in search of her grandmother. . . . Micha: Many years after the war, a young man trying to discover why the Russians imprisoned his grandfather for nine years after the war meets resistance at every turn; the only person who agrees, reluctantly, to help him is compromised by his own past.

The Dark Room evokes the experiences of the individual with astonishing emotional depth and psychological authenticity. With dazzling originality and to profound effect, Rachel Seiffert has re-envisioned and illuminated signal moments of the twentieth century in all their drama and complexity.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Three harrowing stories of people caught in the violent snare of Nazi Germany make up this evenly and unemotionally narrated first novel by an English woman living in Germany. Each of the stories bears its main character's name. The first entry concerns a boy called Helmut growing up in 1930s Berlin who has a birth defect barring him from serving in the army. He learns the trade of photography and chronicles in fascination first the evacuation of his native city, then its gradual destruction. Persistently, even when faced with evidence of the war's dreadful human toll, Helmut continues to spout the Fhrer's rhetoric. The Nazi bravado compensates for his physical shortcomings; at war's end, he is a hollow man. The next tale concerns the flight of a family of five bewildered children, led by Lore, the oldest girl, as they make their way after the Allied victory from Bavaria to their grandmother's house in Hamburg. Dependent on the charity of a fellow refugee (Tomas, a survivor of Buchenwald), the children are always on the verge of starving. After Tomas leads them to safety, Lore's gradual awareness of the Holocaust ages her beyond her years. Finally, in the last section, set in the late 1990s, a young German teacher named Micha digs into the hidden history of his dead grandfather's wartime activity, travels to Belarus to discover the truth of Opa's SS-Waffen deeds and must grapple with the new, terrifying information he unearths. Together, these three affecting works constitute a portrait of changing Germany and a psychological study of the ramifications of Nazi aggression. Seiffert's deliberately dispassionate narrative works to capture the rigid and self-righteous convictions of Germany's general population. Placed alongside the historical record, the tale gives a more complete, comprehensible picture of incomprehensible evil. 6-city author tour.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Understandably, most of the literature dealing with the Nazi era has focused on the victims of the horrors. But to comprehend its impact fully, both then and now, it is also necessary to examine the lives of those on the periphery. In this first novel, Seiffert does just that via three disparate lives. A photographer's assistant with a physical deformity that keeps him out of the army records the changing climate in Berlin before and during the war without fully understanding what he is seeing. A teenage girl, whose parents are both party members placed in captivity at war's end, finds herself leading her four younger siblings on a harrowing, illegal journey across a now divided Germany to reach her grandmother in Hamburg. Finally, a young man in the late 1990s finds himself driven to discover why his beloved grandfather had been imprisoned for nine years in the Soviet Union following the war. When he discovers the truth, another struggle begins. Each of these compelling, wholly believable stories lends additional perspective to our understanding of the period. For all serious literary collections.
- David W. Henderson, Eckerd Coll. Lib., St. Petersburg, FL
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Pantheon (May 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375421041
• ISBN-13: 978-0375421044
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,923,784 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Exceptional debut, February 15, 2002

By 

Your librarian (St Louis) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Dark Room: A Novel (Hardcover)

There are two sides to every story. the vast majority of Holocaust literature has dealt with the victim's story. With her debut, Seiffert provocatively describes the guilt, remorse, and confusion that must exist for the German side of the Holocaust.

While many of us view all Germans of the World War II era as Nazis active in the genocide of unwanted groups in Europe, Seiffert shows us that this is not the case. She writes three vignette novellas on the experience of an innocent uninvolved German ; the innocent children of a Nazi officer ; and a young German man who discovers the Nazi connections of a beloved grandfather.

But this book is more than historical fiction. It encourages introspection. How would I respond if I were suddenly confronted with the unsvory past of a loved one? Would I have the courage and strength to survive should life as I know it suddenly fall apart? What am I made of?

The three vignettes do not link at all, casting doubt on the book's billing as a "novel," but that matters little. Seiffert creates such sympathetic characters that the reader is drawn into their plights and struglles along with them. Her prose is wonderful and the book becomes difficlut to put down.

I expect future great novels from Seiffert. She is a terrific writer.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dark Lives, October 29, 2001

By 

Eric Anderson (London, United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Dark Room: A Novel (Hardcover)

There have been many narratives which deal with the world's reaction to the atrocities caused by the Nazis, but few have dealt so directly with how Germans feel about inheriting the knowledge of these crimes. Does sharing a national identity with people who have committed such crimes make you a criminal as well? This is the issue that Rachel Seiffert follows with such tenacity in her incredible first novel. The question is beautifully threaded throughout the three narratives of Germans at different points in the century. The final narrative of Micha's digs the deepest into the problem. The three central characters are connected to the Nazi warfare and are trying to understand if their relation to it is something integrally related to themselves. What emerges is a well-rounded picture of the difficulty of living with the fact of this history and trying to peacefully make it a part of your identity.

Yet, this novel isn't a meditation only for Germans to deal with their own history. (After all, who doesn't belong to a nation that has committed governmentally enforced crimes against a group of people?) It makes an important statement about World War II but also one about the human condition and our relation to the past. The human relationships are tenderly drawn. All the characters are intensely selfish in their own way, but have encountered numerous difficulties in their lives which have moderated the way they relate to people. The book moves much more slowly at the end and becomes very meditative. At times this becomes more tedious than insightful. However, the final picture is a complicated portrait of national guilt wrapped with small examples of human kindness and forgiveness.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very Well Done, May 30, 2001

By 

taking a rest - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Dark Room: A Novel (Hardcover)

Ms. Seiffert's book, "The Dark Room", is notable as not only an auspicious debut for this young writer, but additionally for her remarkable talent in relating a feel for human events that took place decades before she was born. None of these three stories is based on Historical Fact, what she wrote she created. That the stories probably did occur in some manner, takes nothing away from the writing she offers readers.

The book contains three stories or novellas that are not dependent upon one another, and while not all carried the same impact, the three are consistently well written. The Author writes in an understated manner, this is not a series of stories that shock by atrocity alone. The book is replete with human suffering both inflicted and endured, but it is delivered with a subtle pen. Ms. Seiffert also has taken a less familiar perspective in this book. The book does have a camp survivor as a pivotal player in the final story, however generally we see the other victims of the crimes of this war. The events that forever damage these people are explored both as they happened and as they are uncovered generations later.

The final story is, "Micha", and I found it to be the strongest. Those who were affected by being present during the war and its aftermath generally struggle with grief or rage that is more familiar; they are the immediate victims of the conflict. The final story painfully demonstrates that certain conduct has ramifications that never subside, as they literally inhabit the generations that follow. Time does not in fact heal many things.

I look forward to more of what this woman will offer as she has a manner of writing that that slowly invades the mind's eye, and in this case encompasses it with its horror and crimes. It is a powerful method of delivering themes that are all fundamentally appalling, without any added emphasis. She presents her stories without flourish and without preaching. A very talented young Author.