We Germans

A remarkable and audacious novel that is harrowingly real and, at the same time, asks the most searching questions about men at war - William Boyd An impressively realistic novel of German soldiers on the eastern front, raising the fundamental questions of individual and collective guilt - Antony Beevor This may be only his second novel, but Alexander Starritt is already showing striking signs of ambition ... a visceral examination of guilt, collective and individual, centred on a small group of bedraggled German soldiers on the eastern front . . . individual episodes are vividly done, and the book has a gritty realism. Its arguments about the equivocal nature of guilt on the battlefield can be arresting - The Times Daringly, in what is only his second novel, Alexander Starritt climbs into the skin of one of the most appalling archetypes of the 20th century: a Nazi soldier as he marauds across eastern Europe during the second world war - Financial Times A stirring work that reads like a developing photograph, the lines slowly clarifying, the light steadily emerging from the dark - TLS [A] thoughtful, unsettling chronicle . . . a fascinatingly enigmatic addition to the literature of Germany's coming to terms with the past - Publishers Weekly Starritt's prose is riveting. It unspools like a roll of film-raw, visceral, and propulsive, rich with sensory detail and unsparing in its depictions of cruelty . . . We Germans feels eerily timely . . . Starritt's daring work challenges us to lay bare our histories, to seek answers from the past, and to be open to perspectives starkly different from our own - New York Times