It’s not just that the past only grudgingly yields its secrets, but that their significance is often obscure until more details emerge. Starting out on his quest into his family history, Joe Dunthorne doesn’t know what to ask his grandmother about the experience of Jewish families such as theirs in Hitler’s Germany. She tells him to go and read a book. He does, but it turns out she didn’t like that book. So he decides to write one instead.
