Book description
When Julia Rosenthal returns to the suburban estate of her
childhood, the unspoken tensions that permeated her seemingly
conventional family life come flooding back. Trying to make sense of
the secrets and half truths, she is forced to question how she has
raised her own daughter -- with an openness and honesty that Susanna
has just rejected in a very public betrayal of trust. Meanwhile her
brother, Max, is happy to forge an alternative path through life,
leaving the past undisturbed. But in a different place and time,
another woman struggles to tell the story of her early years in
wartime Germany, gradually revealing the secrets she has carried
through the century, until past and present collide with unexpected
and haunting results. In her devastating and beautifully understated
second novel, Sue Eckstein takes the reader on a skilfully plotted
journey where our growing awareness of Julia and Max's true heritage
is in stark contrast to Julia's own interpretation of the past.
Interweaving universal themes -- the nature of identity, the meaning
of family, the emotional legacy of the past -- Interpreters
magnificently unravels the impact of a war that resonates across four generations.
Sue Eckstein worked for VSO for many years in London, Bhutan and the
Gambia. Now a lecturer at Brighton and Sussex Medical School, she is
also working on a PhD in creative writing at the University of Sussex.
Her plays include The Tuesday Group, first performed in London in 2003,
as well as Kaffir Lilies ('Really wonderful - a first rate production'
Nell Dunn), Laura and Old School Ties ('Sparky and intriguing, written
and performed with a real edge' Guardian) all for BBC Radio 4. Her first
novel The Cloths of Heaven was published to great acclaim in 2009, and
serialised on BBC Radio 4 Woman's Hour in 2010.
