Children of Radium

“It seems like every family has a bit of ancestral folklore, and Joe Dunthorne’s is better than most… . [Dunthorne] is an excellent companion throughout, telling the story with a mix of comic timing, wry self-depreciation, and genuine appreciation for the strange and difficult lives people live.” –Chicago Tribune“Profound … comic … unconventional … In Dunthorne’s hands, these disparate moments of bearing witness–sometimes in the most literal way–add up to a remarkable, strange, and complicated story, full of the shame and humor a lesser memoir might have avoided.” –New York Times”[A] bracing memoir [that] confronts us with a family legacy as unsettling as the warning sign posted outside the fenced-off Orgacid poison factory: ‘Risk of death–Do not enter.’” –Wall Street Journal“A slippery marvel… . Dunthorne’s voice–affable, warm, wry–casts a spell … The book plays out as a tangled investigation of complicity, courage, and cowardice [and] a quixotic voyage into the heart of 20th-century darkness.” –Observer (UK)“Riveting … Dunthorne strikes a near-perfect balance of history and personal reflection, and his questions about Merzbacher’s moral dilemmas resonate. This is a must-read.” –Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“A brave and beautiful memoir, Joe Dunthorne’s incisive exploration of his family history unearths stunning discoveries and takes the reader on a remarkable adventure that spans countries and resonates across generations. I have read many memoirs of the war and have never encountered anything like this. Lyrical but unflinching, this is an extraordinary book.” –Ariana Neumann, New York Times bestselling author of When Time Stopped

“[A] beau­ti­ful­ly ren­dered per­son­al his­to­ry, writ­ten with mature per­spec­tive as well as ten­der­ness, cross­ing gen­er­a­tions and tra­vers­ing coun­tries to expose the truth beneath the trau­ma and the tra­vail of his great-grandfather’s life … It is warm and at times even radi­ant… . Dunthorne’s gen­tly self-dep­re­cat­ing approach and his deep and dis­ci­plined research com­bine to make a very sat­is­fy­ing memoir.” –Jewish Book Council

“Surprisingly funny as well as illuminating … Dunthorne brings his literary skills to the medium, offering us a story with more twists and turns than a road on the Amalfi Coast. There is also a delicious set of constantly-evolving characters.” –Haaretz

“The memoir displays Dunthorne’s gift for wry understatement and his doggedness as a researcher.” –Los Angeles Times

“Dunthorne’s winding story embraces other family members whose histories were less freighted with guilt, but [his great-grandfather] Siegfried’s lies at its heart as a cautionary tale of accommodating evil. A thoughtful, troubling addition to the literature of the Holocaust.” –Kirkus Reviews

“[A] mind-spinning family history… . Rueful, determined, and funny, Dunthorne presents a galvanizing and revelatory saga of prickly personalities, desperation, denial, and the overriding drive to survive.” –Booklist

“Children of Radium is an exhilarating exploration of legacy. Unburying family secrets–especially secrets this big, this profound–is painstaking and heartbreaking work. In the hands of a lesser writer, a story like this would collapse, become just a mush of uncertainty. But Dunthorne is a masterful guide, surefooted and diligent and honest and funny. We are with him, enthralled, every step of the way.” –Menachem Kaiser, author of Plunder: A Memoir of Family Property and Nazi Treasure

“Enigmatic, self-deprecating, enjoyable… . [Dunthorne] brings a novelist’s eye for detail.” –Sunday Times Culture (UK)

“In this excellent family memoir, Dunthorne digs down through layers of memory and myth to uncover an unsettling story… . Children of Radium is a powerful exploration of the struggle to separate truth from the stories we want to believe. Dunthorne interrogates not just the omissions and self-deceptions in his great-grandfather’s memoir, but also his own complicated motivations for revisiting his familial past. A triumph of stylish prose, the book tackles dark subject matter with moral precision and a surprisingly keen sense of humour.” –Irish Times

“Truly moving… . This is a story of cumulative denialism [and] many unanswerable questions.” –Literary Review (UK)

“A funny and moving family history that troubles even as it entertains.” –Monocle (UK)

“An extraordinary and unexpected journey; one finely and gently crafted.” –Philippe Sands, author of The Ratline: The Exalted Life and Mysterious Death of a Nazi Fugitive

Joe Dunthorne is the author of Children of Radium, The Adulterants, O Positive: Poems, Wild Abandon, and Submarine, which was translated into fifteen languages and made into an award-winning film. His work has been published in The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, London Review of Books, The Paris Review, McSweeney’s, Granta, The Guardian, and The Atlantic. He was born in Wales and lives in London.