The Longest Night
This is a continuation of the loose series that features Carl and Emma Regendorf, a married couple living in Berlin during the Second World War. Carl is German and works in the Foreign Office under Adam von Trott, while Emma is a Dutch national. Carl is part of the resistance movement against Hitler and the Nazi regime that is driving Germany to complete destruction. It is the summer of 1944, and von Stauffenberg’s assassination attempt on Hitler has just failed. In the crackdown following this, both men are arrested and Emma has to hurriedly leave their relatively peaceful home in the Berlin suburb of Dahlem. Carl is executed by a vengeful regime, while Emma survives the war and makes a slow and painful return to the Netherlands, to Gouda and then to Rotterdam, where she makes her home.
The story is narrated through Emma’s memories as a dying woman in her mid-nineties, looking to make a dignified exit from her long life. She looks back on her life with both her husbands and, as always, the shadow of the war looms large and menacing over all who lived through it. Emma is unable to obliterate the war and her memories—instead learning to make them part of her life so that she can find some way to exist with a degree of meaning. This is a moving and engaging novel, intelligent and poignant: a pleasure to read.
