Foreign Rights

Jenny Erpenbeck

The Book of Words

In a nameless country, the young girl narrator describes her earlier childhood with a mixture of idealism and hinted violence. Her father, who read her fairy tales and bounced her on his knee, stands assuredly in the background as a caring figure. However, as a member of the country's crumbling regime, her father is an active participant in the horrible brutality that the collapse triggers. All of the happy memories in the narrator's early life, and the use of words, are called into question.

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