• Österreichischer Buchpreis 2017 · Shortlist

The Day My Grandfather Was a Hero

Der Tag, an dem mein Großvater ein Held war

Paulus Hochgatterer (born 1961)

Translated by Jamie Bulloch

English editions

In English

• The Day My Grandfather Was a Hero

  MacLehose Press · United Kingdom · 23 July 2020 · 112 pages

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Lower Austria, in the last days of the Second World War. Nelli is probably thirteen; she remembers nothing, and a farming family takes her in. One day an escaped Russian forced labourer appears on the farm with a painting from Hermann Göring's art collection. Three Wehrmacht soldiers arrive, the Russian is sentenced as a deserter by a summary court, an American bomber pilot is shot down, a boy falls into the mill stream. In Nelli's account, everyone is saved. Was it really like that? It could have been, says a second narrating voice, and much is left open to the end in this short, dense book.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novella

Length

110 pages in the original

Genres

War, Historical, Coming of age (assigned by AI)

Set in

Austria, 1945

First published

2017 by Deuticke

Author's age

56 when first published

ISBN

9783552063495 (original)

9780857059499 (MacLehose Press, United Kingdom)