Gerta

At the end of May 1945 the German inhabitants of Brno are driven out of the city towards the Austrian border, and among them is Gerta Schnirch, carrying her baby daughter and little else. Typhus and dysentery kill many on the march, which stops at Pohořelice; Gerta survives as a forced labourer on the farms of southern Moravia and stays on after the expulsions end. When she gets back her Czechoslovak citizenship she returns to Brno and lives through the upheavals of the decades that follow. Questions of guilt, revenge and forgiveness between Czechs and Germans run through the novel, as does a fraught bond between mother and daughter, strained by life on the edge of society and by two generations unable to understand each other.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Length

413 pages in the original

Genres

Historical, War, Family (assigned by AI)

Set in

Czechia, 1945–2000s

First published

2009 by Host

Author's age

29 when first published

ISBN

9788072943159 (original)

9781542043144 (Amazon Crossing, United States)

9781542043151 (Amazon Crossing, United States)