Now a Major Motion Picture, Lore(previously published as The Dark Room) is a powerful, suspenseful work of fiction that examines the legacy of World War II on ordinary Germans -- both immediate survivors of the war and future generations. A Booker Prize finalist and winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.
In the spring of 1945, weeks after the defeat of Germany, a teenage girl called Lore -- whose parents have been arrested by the Allies -- sets off with her four younger siblings on a 500-mile illegal trek through the four zones of occupation in search of their grandmother. This central episode of a novel in three parts is the basis for a new film.
Review
WINNER – Los Angeles Times Book Prize for First Fiction
FINALIST 2001 – Booker Prize
LONGLISTED 2002 – Orange Prize for Fiction
A Globe and Mail Best Book
“[S]tunning…. Seiffert writes with such extraordinary elegance that it takes your breath away. Her voice stings with aching precision yet possesses a glorious innocence that can trouble the simplest of words. The effortlessness of her language is remarkable given the complexity of perspectives she entertains…. The tension of being implicitly involved in a history one did not necessarily condone is stretched agonizingly taut through Seiffert’s quiet exploration of the subtle complexities of competing perceptions within a self, within a family, within a nation.”
—Camilla Gibb, The Globe and Mail
“It’s a painful subject and no less so in Seiffert’s handling of it. The reading itself, though, is easy. The airiness of Seiffert’s prose, her deft management of the present tense, makes the narrator—even the page—disappear.”
— Toronto Star
“[An] ambitious and powerful first novel…. Seiffert writes lean, clean prose. Deftly, she hangs large ideas on the vivid private experiences of her principal characters.”
— The New York Times
“[A] page-turner…. Not only does [Seiffert] fully address one of the most dismal episodes in human history, but she does so with a nuanced approach that encourages insight even as it prompts debate.”
— The Vancouver Sun
“Exquisite…. [A] beautifully written, elegant and emotional trilogy of theme-linked chronicles…Seiffert sifts the layers of guilt and denial which permeated German society at the end of the Second World War, layers that began to shift and change with succeeding generations.”
— The London Free Press
“[M]agnetic.… Gripping storytelling of tremendous force.”
— Edmonton Journal
About the Author
Born in Oxford in 1971 to German and Australian parents, RACHEL SEIFFERT is the author of The Dark Room , which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Guardian First Book Award in 2001, and was winner of the Los Angeles Times Prize for First Fiction and a Betty Trask Award in 2002. In 2003, she was selected as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists. In 2004, she published Field Study , a collection of short stories, one of which received a David T. K. Wong award from PEN International. Her novel Afterwards was long-listed for the Orange Prize and, in 2011, she received the E.M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her books have been translated into ten languages. After living in Scotland and Germany, she now resides in London, and divides her time between teaching and writing.