Children and Fire (Burgdorf Cycle, Book 4)

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Children and Fire (Burgdorf Cycle, Book 4)

The fourth novel in the Burgdorf Cycle

Though more than fifteen years have passed since Ursula Hegiâ€™s Stones from the River captivated critics and readers alike, it retains its popularity, is on academic reading lists, and continues to be adopted by book groups.

Also set in Burgdorf, Germany, Hegiâ€™s Children and Fire tells the story of a single day that will forever transform the lives of the townspeople. At the core of this remarkable novel is the question of how one teacherâ€”gifted and joyful, passionate and inventiveâ€”can become seduced by propaganda during the early months of Hitlerâ€™s regime and encourage her ten-year-old students to join the â€œHitler-Jugendâ€ with its hikes and songs and bonfires. Membership, she believes, will be a step toward better schools, better apprenticeships.

How can a woman we admire choose a direction we donâ€™t admire? So much has changed for the teacher, Thekla Jansen, and the people of Burgdorf in the year since the parliament building burned. Theklaâ€™s lover, Emil Hesping, is sure the Nazis did it to frame the communists. But Thekla believes what she hears on the radio, that the communists set the fire, and sheâ€™s willing to relinquish some of her freedoms to keep her teaching position. She has always taken her moral courage for granted, but when each silent agreement chips away at that courage, she knows she must reclaim it.

Hegi funnels pivotal moments in history through the experiences of individual characters: Theklaâ€™s mother, who works as a housekeeper for a Jewish family; her employers, Michel and Ilse Abramowitz; Theklaâ€™s mentally ill father; Trudi Montag and her father, Leo Montag; FrÃ¤ulein Siderova, midwife to the dying; and the students who adore their young teacher. As Ursula Hegi writes along that edge where sorrow and bliss meet, she shows us how one societyâ€”educated, cultural, compassionateâ€”can slip into a reality thatâ€™s fabricated by propaganda and controlled by fear, how a surge of national unity can be manipulated into the dehumanization of a perceived enemy and the justification of torture and murder.

Gorgeously rendered and emotionally taut, Children and Fire confirms Ursula Hegiâ€™s position as one of the most distinguished writers of her generation.
Country USA
Manufacturer Scribner
Binding Hardcover
ReleaseDate 2011-05-24
UnitCount 1
EANs 9781451608298

Country	USA
Manufacturer	Scribner
Binding	Hardcover
ReleaseDate	2011-05-24
UnitCount	1
EANs	9781451608298

Children and Fire (Burgdorf Cycle, Book 4)

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