The Scrapbook

A debut novel about a life-changing romance in the long shadow of European history, inspired by the author's real discovery.

'A singular portrait of intoxicating young love' AUBE REY LESCURE

'You wouldn't be able to put it down' SAMANTHA ROSE HILL

For years after I tried to tell myself that what happened between us was hardly worth remembering.

Harvard, 1996. Anna is about to graduate when she meets Christoph, a German student visiting campus. They only spend a week together – discussing art, ideas and history – but it is long enough for Anna to fall desperately in love. Anna begins to visit Christoph in Germany. As she tries to understand the young, elegant man who fascinates her, he reveals his country to her.

Germany is still reckoning with the Holocaust and its pretty new squares and grand facades belie its recent history and the war’s destruction. Christoph condemns his country’s actions but remains vague about the part his own grandparents played. Anna’s grandfather, meanwhile, was an American GI who took photos of the end of the war, photos that capture its horror, preserved in a scrapbook only Anna has seen.

Anna wants to believe in Christoph and the future he promises her but as their relationship becomes increasingly unsettling, she must face up to everything she has been unwilling to see, and everything Christoph has chosen to ignore.

'An elegant, unsettling novel about the burden of history and the illusions of love' Sana Krasikov, author of The Patriots

'Heather Clark writes with a rare empathy' Times Literary Supplement