Poet Rosmarie Waldrop's classic novel about the horrors and banalities
of German life between the World Wars.
"Josef and Frederika Seifert made a bad marriage--he so metaphysical,
she, furious frustrated singer, furious frustrated femme fatale,
unfaithful within two months of the wedding day. The setting is small
town Germany between the wars; the Seiferts are just those 'ordinary
people' who helped Hitler rise, bequeathing their daughter, who tells
their story, a legacy of grief and guilt. Rosmarie Waldrop's haunting
novel, superbly intelligent, evocative and strange, reverberates in the
memory for a long time, a song for the dead, a judgment." (Angela
Carter)