The Immanence of God in the Tropics
In this unforgettable dual memoir of her parents’ lives and her own, Caroline Heller brings to life the lost world of European café culture, and reminds us of the sustaining power of literature in the most challenging of times.
Heller vividly evokes prewar Prague, where her parents lived, loved, and studied. Her mother, Liese Florsheim, was a young German refugee initially drawn to Erich Heller, a bright but detached intellectual, rather than to his brother, Paul. As Hitler’s power spreads and World War II becomes inevitable, their world is destroyed and they must flee the country and continent. Paul, who will eventually become the author’s father, is trapped and sent to Buchenwald, where he survives under hellish conditions.
Though Paul’s life nearly ends in Europe, he reunites with Liese in the United States, where they marry. Their daughter Caroline, restless and insecure, carries the trauma of her parents’ story with her, but her quest to make peace with her heritage is eased by her love of books and writers, part of her family legacy. Through the darkest years of Hitler’s rule, Caroline’s parents and uncle had turned time and time again to literature to help them survive—and so she does as well.
Written with sensitivity and grace, Reading Claudius is a profound meditation on the ways we strive to solve the mysteries of our pasts, and a window into understanding the ones we love.
“This fine book contains moments of emotion so pure that in the end, we too fall in love with the writer’s past.” —The New York Times
“In Reading Claudius, Caroline Heller does what Rilke called the “heart-work,” exploring moral accountability and the toll exacted by the fact of survival. Her family story begins in pre-war Czechoslovakia, passes through the Nazi holocaust, and continues on in postwar America, affirming that events may end but repercussions never do. A searching and humane memoir.” —Sven Birkerts, author of The Art of Time in Memoir: Then, Again
George Rosen was born in Chicago and educated at Harvard. He was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Kenya, which served as the setting for his 1990 novel, Black Money (Scarborough House), called by Kirkus Reviews “a sophisticated, rich, and tantalizing portrait of East Africa” and by Library Journal “a strong study of power that corrupts at every level and of idealism that persists.” He’s also worked as a political speechwriter, a high-school debate coach, a low-income-housing consultant, and a semiprofessional actor. His short stories have appeared, among other places, in Harper’s, the Yale Review, the Harvard Review, and a Harcourt Brace anthology of crime fiction, A Matter of Crime. Rosen has reported on West Africa for the Atlantic, on Mexico for the Boston Globe, and writes frequently for the Globe’s op-ed page. He has been a radio commentator for the Boston NPR station, WBUR, and taught writing at Tufts University. His awards include the Frank O’Connor Memorial Award, two fellowships from the Artists Foundation, and most recently, a Fellowship in Fiction from the Massachusetts Cultural Council.
