In 1933, Ludwig Seligmann flees Nazi Germany to Tel Aviv, where he marries Hannah a few years later. Personal strokes of fate and the political uncertainty in the newly founded state of Israel make their longing for their homeland grow over the years, so they return to Germany in 1957 with ten-year-old Rafael. They find it difficult to gain a foothold in their native country.
Rafi and his father increasingly suffer from prejudice. The family ultimately moves to Munich, where they gradually settle in. Despite all the obstacles, the dreamy underachiever Rafael passes his school leaving exam, studies history and – against his mother’s bitter resistance – has a relationship with Ingrid, a “shiksa” (a non-Jewish woman). In the third part of his family saga, Rafael Seligmann tells of the difficult search for his father’s lost homeland in an equally sensitive and unsentimental manner. At the same time, his novel is a piece of contemporary history from a Germany in which responsibility for the past was hardly anchored in public consciousness.
 
Rafael Seligmann was born in Tel Aviv in 1947. At the age of ten he immigrated to Germany with his parents. He established the genre of the German-Jewish contemporary novel with Der Musterjude and Der Milchmann, among others. As a non-fiction author, freelance journalist, columnist and editor-in-chief, he is one of the most respected political voices in Germany. In 2012, he founded Jewish Voice from Germany, the largest Jewish newspaper outside of Israel.


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