By the side of a lake in Brandenburg, a young architect builds the house of his dreams
- a summerhouse with wrought-iron balconies, stained-glass windows the colour of jewels, & a bedroom with a hidden closet, all set within a beautiful garden. But the land on which he builds has a dark history of violence that began with the drowning of a young woman in the grip of madness & that grows darker still over the course of the century: the Jewish neighbours disappear one by one; the Red Army requisitions the house, burning the furniture & trampling the garden; a young East German attempts to swim his way to freedom in the West; a couple return from brutal exile in Siberia & leave the house to their granddaughter, who is forced to relinquish her claim upon it & sell to new owners intent upon demolition. Reaching far into the past, & recovering what was lost & what was buried, Jenny Erpenbeck tells an exquisitely crafted, stealthily chilling story of a house & its inhabitants, & a country & its ghosts.