The unification of Germany in 1990 set in train a number of dramatic changes in Germany's
political social and cultural landscape which gave rise to a series of hotly debated memory
contests centred on the newly unified nation's approach to its common Nazi past. As an
important medium of cultural memory literature played a significant part in the controversy
and novels dealing with the Nazi past enjoyed widespread popularity and influence in the 20
years following 1990. But what version of the Nazi past did the authors of these novels choose
to tell? Using the perpetrator victim dichotomy around which much of the debate crystallised
this book seeks to answer this question via a close textual analysis of works by Bernhard
Schlink Ulla Hahn Tanja Dückers and Marcel Beyer. In particular this book analyses these
novels as historiographic metafiction a significantly under-explored angle which raises
important questions concerning our ability to know the truth about the past and destabilises
the basis on which we judge guilt or innocence. In providing a deeper understanding of the
approach of fiction authors to the Nazi past in the post-1990 period this book aims to enrich
our understanding of its legacy in contemporary German society today.
