The Scrapbook

A story of a consuming first love haunted by European history and family memory, and inspired by real events

For years after I tried to tell myself that what happened between us was hardly worth remembering. Others told me the same. But now I write the truth. He was everything to me then. Everything.

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.

Inspired by a real-life discovery, this is a story of a consuming love haunted by European history and inherited guilt, for readers of Deborah Levy, Lauren Elkin and Jenny Erpenbeck.

‘A swiftly-moving, molecularly perceptive, singular portrait of intoxicating young love’ Aube Rey Lescure, author of River East, River West