The Junkers

A young British diplomat serving in West Berlin falls in love with Suzi a German girl whom he first sees in a café on the Kurfürstendamm. She is the niece of a German politician who the narrator, in his role as the political adviser to the commander of the British garrison in the city, has been told to investigate because of his links with prominent Nazis in the past. The narrative now divides between the narrator’s pursuit of the enigmatic Suzi in West Berlin in the early 1960s, and the back story of a family of Prussian aristocrats, the von Rummelsbergs – the Junkers of the novel’s title. There are three brothers – Klaus, Helmuth and Edward – who react in different ways to the prevailing ideologies of Communism and National Socialism. The reader, like the narrator, is obliged to live through Germany’s `undigested’ past.

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