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Library for the War-Wounded

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Library for the War-Wounded

By: Monika Helfer, Gillian Davidson - translator
Narrated by: Kristin Atherton
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About this listen

Bloomsbury presents Library for the War-Wounded by Monika Helfer, read by Kristin Atherton.

From Monika Helfer’s award-winning, internationally bestselling wartime trilogy, based on her own family. Translated into English for the first time.

‘We called him Vati, Dad. Not Father, not Papa. That’s what he wanted. He thought it sounded modern. He wanted to present himself to us, and through us, as a man in tune with the modern age. Though he seemed to come from nowhere.’

Josef was an illegitimate child, a charity case from Salzburg, schooled by a benefactor. He was drafted to fight in the Second World War while still at school and sent to Russia, returning with only one leg. 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 home for injured soldiers, a strangely suspended, deeply isolated place with a remarkable library.

He was a man of many mysteries. To his daughter, Monika, none was greater than his obsession with these cloistered, crumbling books, his great treasure and secret amidst a country barrelling away from the memory of war.

Beautifully written, restrained, and memorable, Library for the War-Wounded turns a real life into great literature by confronting the universal question: Who are our parents, really?©2024 Monika Helfer and Gillian Davidson (P)2024 Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
20th Century Family Life Fiction Genre Fiction Historical Fiction World Literature War
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A follow up to Last House before the mountain. It can be listened to independently or as a sequel. Its beautifully written and moves seamlessly through time periods. This can take some getting used to but the narrator does a great job. Felt thoroughly immersed in all the different characters.

Enjoyable tale across time

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