Without a Country
Without a Country is a novel that follows a Jewish German family through their trials and tribulations after they are run out of their homeland during WWII and Hitler’s reign. The patriarch helps to employ other expats in the Turkish university system. The political turmoil and family dramas are never ending in a country that is in constant upheaval.
I truly liked this read! The characters are based on real professors who taught in Turkey after being ousted from Germany. The author writes relatable personalities and by the middle of the book I was so curious to see how everyone’s lives would end up. The only thing that threw me off is that the first half of the book follows a pretty condensed timeline, and then the second half of the book covers multiple generations of the protagonist’s descendants. It wasn’t so off-putting that I ended up disliking the novel, but I felt like it went from a rolling along speed to a time warp speed and I just wanted to have the time to hear all about each generation in detail (but that’s coming from somebody who loves long novels).
I thought this was a great look into what some immigrants went through after picking up roots in their homeland of Germany and transplanted themselves into foreign nations just to survive. I think this would be a great book if you also liked The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri.