Unexploded Ordnance by Catharina Coenen - 9781632064059

Restless Books

Unexploded OrdnanceTime Fuses & Taxonomies\nAuthor(s): Catharina Coenen\nFormat: Paperback\nPublisher: Restless Books, United States\nImprint: Restless Books\nISBN-13: 9781632064059, 978-1632064059\nSynopsis\nWINNER OF THE 2023 RESTLESS BOOKS PRIZE FOR NEW IMMIGRANT WRITING\n\nIn imaginative prose that interrogates the past with a poets curiosity and a scientists pen, Unexploded Ordnance seeks to answer how we are shaped by the stories we inherit.\n\nAfter moving from Germany to the US to work as a professor of biology, Catharina Coenen takes up residence in a second language to voice the questions she could not ask at home. To what extent was her grandfather implicated in World War II? What exactly did her grandmother, mother, and aunt live through? And why are womens wartime stories so seldom told? Coenen peels back generational silences to walk alongside her grandmother, who comes of age during Hitlers rise to power, watches friends disappear one by one, and flees bombing raid.