The Other Hoffmann Sister

Description

Shortlisted for The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year 2015, Ben Fergusson's critically acclaimed debut, The Spring of Kasper Meier, was the winner of the Betty Trask Prize 2015 and the HWA 2015 Debut Crown Award. The Other Hoffmann Sister is a gripping, evocative read about two sisters set in pre-WW1 Germany which will appeal to fans of The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry. For Ingrid Hoffmann the story of her sister's disappearance began in their first weeks in Southwest Africa... Ingrid Hoffmann has always felt responsible for her sister Margarete and when their family moves to German Southwest Africa in 1902, her anxieties only increase. The casual racism that pervades the German community, the strange relationship between her parents and Baron von Ketz, from whom they bought their land, and the tension with the local tribes all culminate in tragedy when Baron von Ketz is savagely murdered. Baroness von Ketz and their son, Emil, flee with the Hoffmanns as the Baron's attackers burn down the family's farm. Both families return to Berlin and Ingrid's concerns about Margarete are assuaged when she and Emil von Ketz become engaged on the eve of the First World War. But Margarete disappears on her wedding night at the von Ketz's country house. The mystery of what happened to her sister haunts Ingrid, but as Europe descends into chaos, her hope of discovering the truth becomes ever more distant. After the war, in the midst of the revolution that brings down the Kaiser and wipes out the aristocracy that her family married into, Ingrid returns to the von Ketzes' crumbling estate determined to find out what really happened to her sister.

Ben Fergusson's debut novel, The Spring of Kasper Meier, was awarded the Betty Trask Prize and the HWA Debut Crown, and was shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. The Other Hoffmann Sister and An Honest Man complete a trilogy of novels set in the same apartment block in Berlin at key moments in the city's twentieth-century history. His short fiction has been published in journals internationally and in 2020 he won the Sean O'Faolain International Short Story Prize. He also translates from German, winning a 2020 Stephen Spender Prize for poetry in translation. Ben lives in Berlin with his husband and son.

Beguiling, unsettling, and wonderfully atmospheric. A dark expedition across a nightmarish landscape of physical and emotional damage and moral decay - Sarah Waters, praise for The Spring of Kasper Meier A decidedly accomplished first novel . . . where the keenness of observation and the rhythms of the prose call Graham Greene to mind - Allan Massie, The Scotsman, praise for The Spring of Kasper Meier Ben Fergusson's grittily evocative novel, historically knowledgeable and piercing in its scrutiny of morally ambiguous characters, political murkiness and a world quivering with suspicion and jeopardy, impressively recalls Graham Greene's The Third Man - Peter Kemp, praise for The Spring of Kasper Meier