{"product_id":"children-of-radium-a-buried-inheritance-9781982180751","title":"Children of Radium: A Buried Inheritance","description":"\u003cb\u003eIn the tradition of \u003ci\u003eWhen Time Stopped\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Hare with Amber Eyes\u003c\/i\u003e, this subversive family memoir investigates the dark legacy of the author's great-grandfather, a talented German-Jewish chemist who wound up developing chemical weapons and gas mask filters for the Nazis.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eWhen Joe Dunthorne began researching his family history, he expected to write the account of their harrowing escape from Nazi Germany in 1935. What he found in his great-grandfather Siegfried's voluminous, unpublished, partially translated memoir was a much darker, more complicated story. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Siegfried was an eccentric Jewish scientist living in a small town north of Berlin, where he began by developing a radioactive toothpaste before moving on to products with a more sinister military connection--first he made and tested gas-mask filters, and then he was invited to establish a chemical weapons laboratory. By 1933, he was the laboratory's director, helping the Nazis to \"improve\" their poisons and prepare for large-scale production. \"I confess to my descendants who will read these lines that I made a grave error,\" he wrote. \"I cannot shake off the great debt on my conscience.\" \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Armed only with his great-grandfather's rambling, nearly two-thousand-page deathbed memoir and a handful of archival clues, Dunthorne traveled to Munich, Ammendorf, Berlin, Ankara, and Oranienburg--a place where hundreds of unexploded bombs remain hidden in the irradiated soil--to uncover the sprawling, unsettling legacy of Siegfried's work. Seeking to understand one \"jolly grandpa\" with a patchy psychiatric history, Dunthorne confronts the uncomfortable questions that lie at the heart of every family: Can we ever understand our origins? Is every family story a work of fiction? And if the truth can be found, will we be able to live with it? \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003ci\u003eChildren of Radium\u003c\/i\u003e is a witty and wry, deeply humane and endlessly surprising meditation on individual and collective inheritance that considers the long half-life of trauma, the weight of guilt, and the ever-evasive nature of the truth.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJoe Dunthorne is the author of \u003ci\u003eThe Adulterants\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eO Positive: Poems\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eWild Abandon\u003c\/i\u003e, and\u003ci\u003e Submarine\u003c\/i\u003e, which was translated into fifteen languages and made into an award-winning film. His work has been published in \u003ci\u003eThe\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eLondon Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Paris Review\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eMcSweeney's\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eGranta\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Guardian\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eThe Atlantic\u003c\/i\u003e. He was born in Wales and lives in London.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Scribner Book Company","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51186795446546,"sku":"9781982180751","price":20.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_697a4a21-537b-466c-ba62-1f09deaa89c5.jpg?v=1744632385","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/children-of-radium-a-buried-inheritance-9781982180751","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}