In My Grandfather’s Shadow

A remarkable cross-pollination of memoir, psychology and history in which the author comes to grips with being the granddaughter of a Nazi general. * i Paper *Brave … full of insights and good research. – Caroline Moorehead * Times Literary Supplement *A compelling journey through guilt and shame that asks fundamental and painful questions about the extent of a family member’s participation in one of the biggest crimes of the 20th century. – Derek Niemann, author of A Nazi in the FamilyIn My Grandfather’s Shadow is an extraordinary book. Beautifully written, poignant and acutely perceptive; endlessly thought-provoking and challenging. From the nature of wickedness to the phenomenon of epigenetics, it is also an extremely powerful and different way of seeing the vast and terrible tides of history. – Sinclair McKay, author of Berlin, Dresden, and The Secret Life of Bletchley ParkSeeking to untangle the complexities of her own life, the author goes in search of a WW2 German general - the grandfather she never knew. The outcome is a powerful and at times painfully honest story that will touch readers at many levels. – Julia Boyd, author of Travellers in the Third Reich and A Village in the Third ReichThis is a moving and powerful memoir that illuminates the extraordinary power of unprocessed trauma as it passes through generations, and how when it is faced it can be healed. – Julia Samuel, author of Every Family Has a Story, Grief Works and This Too Shall Pass[A] remarkable memoir …. It’s a powerful investigation into the individual personal cost that results from wider history, and the ways in which inherited guilt and trauma can leave scars across generations. – Caroline Sanderson * The Bookseller *This is an absolutely extraordinary book. In peeling back the layers of her family history, Angela Findlay reveals a vast, hidden European story that few nations have ever been brave enough to confront. – Keith Lowe, Sunday Times bestselling author of Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II

A page turner of the highest calibre! Meticulously researched, searingly honest and beautifully written, this timely book is a salient reminder of how intergenerational relationships connect threads between past and present. The author skillfully excavates her grandfather’s life putting the family puzzle together piece by piece to create a forensic and fascinating portrait of the past. Her book gives new meaning to the prescient words of psychoanalyst, Roger Woolger: ‘It is the responsibility of the living to heal the dead. Otherwise their unfinished business will continue to play out in our fears, phobias and illnesses.

Angela Findlay is an Anglo-German artist and public speaker who has spent much of her career teaching art in prisons. Her time ‘behind bars’ in Germany and later as Arts Co-ordinator for the London-based Koestler Arts charity informed her research into the intergenerational consequences of unresolved trauma, guilt and shame. For over a decade, she has been lecturing and writing on the topic as well as on post-war remembrance, resolution and reconciliation. In My Grandfather’s Shadow is her first book.