This book contains a Germany that we did not know: pre-war Berlin through the eyes of a young photographer, refugee children in the spring of 1945, the grandson of an SS man, half a century later, investigating his grandfather’s crimes in Belarus. The tragedy of World War II had a special impact on the fate of ordinary citizens of the country that unleashed the most brutal war of the 20th century. An attempt to understand “from the inside” the experience of war that passed through every home and every family sometimes leads to unexpected and shocking revelations.

“The Dark Room,” the debut novel by Rachel Seiffert (b. 1971), the daughter of a German woman and Australian, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2001.