Saints and Villains

Zusatztext "High drama . . . Stirring adventure . . . To find a historical figure like Dietrich Bonhoeffer packaged in what is essentially a moral thriller is a surprising joy." --The Boston Globe "A SPLENDID NOVEL ABOUT A SPLENDID MAN . . . In the pantheon of heroes of this fading century! few are more deserving of residency than [Dietrich] Bonhoeffer." --Philadelphia Inquirer "COMPELLING . . . The story is engrossingly narrated! with an eye for significant detail! a strong sense of life's bitter ironies and a powerful feeling of immediacy. . . . The Bonhoeffer depicted in this novel is a convincing blend of high-mindedness and self-doubt! an austere yet vulnerable man! naive and unworldly in some respects! but able to see far more deeply than many of his contemporaries into the illness and evil of his time." --Newsday "[A] PANORAMIC STORY . . . This novelized version of the pastor's life by Giardina manages the extremely difficult task of giving a known story genuine tension and spiritual resonance." --Publishers Weekly (starred review) Informationen zum Autor Denise Giardina was born and raised in West Virginia. She is the author of Good King Harry, Saints and Villains, Storming Heaven, and The Unquiet Earth . Klappentext In the charnel house that was Europe in the Second World War, there were few instances of shining moral courage, let along secular sainthood. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian and Nazi resister was the exception. This emblematic figure risked his life--and finally lost it--through his participation in a failed plot to assassinate Hitler and topple his regime. Saints and Villains gives us this exemplary life in a sweeping narrative that is bold in conception and utterly convincing in its power of imaginative reconstruction. Leseprobe WHEN HE WAS SMALL, he was often mistaken for a girl. It was still the fashion in many well-to-do families to dress little boys in gowns of lace and taffeta, and Paula Bonhoeffer considered a skirt a convenience to Fraulein Horn, who must change the diapers. Dietrich's featherylight blond hair, worn long and curling in corkscrews at the ends to frame his round face, added to the effect. And since three of the four youngest children were girls, strangers who admired Christel, Sabine, and Baby Suse in her pram included the fourth Bonhoeffer "daughter" in their praise as well. "Astonishing," people would say when the children went with Fraulein Horn for a stroll in the Tiergarten, "that two little girls with such different coloring should be twins"--this because Sabine had dark brown hair and black eyes, while Dietrich was fair. Fraulein Horn would nod as she pushed the pram and say, "After all, they aren't identical twins. This one in fact"--pointing to the blond head--"is a little boy." "You don't say." At three he wore lederhosen and his hair was trimmed to the bottom of his ears, so he was no longer sometimes a she. But with his large eyes and pale skin he was still a beautiful child. Now people said, "With that hair, this one should have been a girl." To make up for it, he tried to act as he thought boys should act. He took charge of Sabine and Baby Suse, not in a bullying way, but in the role of teacher and defender, directing their play and watching out for dangers beneath the bed and beyond the garden wall. He did not know that Sabine felt the same. When the twins sat for their portrait at age seven, it was Sabine's hand that rested protectively on Dietrich's shoulder. They lived then in the Bruckenallee, near the zoo. Sometimes at night the children could hear the animals in their cages, the trumpeting elephants, the grumbling lions, the sharp cries of monkeys and plumed birds. During the Great War, the cries grew more desperate, then weaker. Sometimes they were screams of agony. The oldest brother, Karl-Friedrich, said poo...

Product details

• Authors: Denise Giardina
• Publisher: Ballantine
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 09.02.1999
• EAN: 9780449004272
• ISBN: 978-0-449-00427-2
• No. of pages: 512
• Dimensions: 130 mm x 205 mm x 25 mm
• Series: Fawcett Book; Fawcett Book
• Subject: Fiction > Narrative literature