Marrow and Bone

A moving, darkly funny road trip novel about World War II, returning to one's birthplace, and coming to terms with tragedy.West Germany, 1988, just before the fall of the Berlin Wall: Jonathan Fabrizius, a middle-aged erstwhile journalist, has a comfortable existence in Hamburg, bankrolled by his furniture-manufacturing uncle. He lives with his girlfriend Ulla in a grand, decrepit prewar house that just by chance escaped annihilation by the Allied bombers. One day Jonathan receives a package in the mail from the Santubara Company, a luxury car company, commissioning him to travel in their newest V8 model through the People's Republic of Poland and to write about the route for a car rally. Little does the company know that their choice location is Jonathan's birthplace, for Jonathan is a war orphan from former East Prussia, whose mother breathed her last fleeing the Russians and whose father, a Nazi soldier, was killed on the Baltic coast. At first Jonathan has no interest in the...

The cheapest new copy of Marrow and Bone is €16.60 at medimops DE. Prices checked 8 Nov 2026

More by Walter Kempowski

More by Walter Kempowski