book cover of The Undertaking
Added by 8 members
 

The Undertaking

(2014)
A novel by

 
 
Awards
Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction Best Book (nominee)
Women's Prize For Fiction Best Novel (nominee)
Desperate to escape the Eastern front, Peter Faber, an ordinary German soldier, marries Katharina Spinell, a woman he has never met; it is a marriage of convenience that promises 'honeymoon' leave for him and a pension for her should he die on the front. With 10 days' leave secured, Peter visits his new wife in Berlin; both are surprised by the attraction that develops between them.

When Peter returns to the horror of the front, it is only the dream of Katharina that sustains him as he approaches Stalingrad. Back in Berlin, Katharina, goaded on by her desperate and delusional parents, ruthlessly works her way into the Nazi party hierarchy, wedding herself, her young husband, and their unborn child to the regime. But when the tide of war turns and Berlin falls, Peter and Katharina, ordinary people stained with their small share of an extraordinary guilt, find their simple dream of family increasingly hard to hold on to....


Genre: Historical

Visitors also looked at these books


Used availability for Audrey Magee's The Undertaking


About Fantastic Fiction       Information for Authors