A book for our times
Arvind Narula, chef executive of Urmatt, is a happy man today and not just because his bottled coconut juice, Maprao, has found its place on the shelves of several leading retail stores. He’s also smiling because his wife, Karen Schur-Narula recently completed her fourth book, “Fatherland”, after 12 years of effort.
The Bangkok-based author’s previous works include “Voyage of the Emerald Buddha”, “Like the Gaze of Statues”, and the memoir “Paris Was Ours”. Many expatriate writers in Bangkok choose, understandably, to set their stories in Thailand. But long-time resident and the author Schur-Narula’s new book takes readers on a literary journey into the emerging Nazi regime in Germany in the 1930s from an unusual and disturbing perspective. The novel appears at a particularly appropriate time. In a world increasingly beset by nationalism, racism and religious conflict, the story of a woman caught up in Nazi fervour is uncannily, and disturbingly, relevant.
Schur-Narula takes readers deep inside the head of young Prussian aristocrat Lili von Rittersburg zu Mertz-Tarnekow, a musical prodigy in Berlin. The novel opens in the mid-1920s with Adolf Hitler a guest at a dinner party in the family home. Not only does Hitler use this opportunity to appeal to the upper crust for donations to further his political aspirations, but he lauds Lili’s prowess on the harpsichord. Lili’s father soon turns away from Hitler in disgust, moving the family to New York. But for Lili, Hitler and his Nazi party have become an obsessive longing. Her return to Germany in 1937 leads her into a dangerous landscape of distorted ethics, with devastating consequences.
A major and engrossing work, “Fatherland” haunts the reader long after its final page. It’s available at Asia Books, Kinokuniya, and Bookazine stores for Bt395.
