nora krug belonging a german reckons with history and home

The visual components of the book range from drawings to cartoons to archival letters and photographs married to Krug’s words, they create a stunningly effective, often moving portrait of Krug’s memories and her exploration of the people who came before her.

In Belonging, Krug blends text and images into a kind of roadmap taking her back to a homeland that both comforts and confuses her. “We prepared questions for the old women who travled from America to tell us about the camps,” she writes, “but we never thought to ask about one another’s grandparents.”

For a generation steeped in self-examination, there was an awful lot, it turned out, they didn’t look at. Krug and her classmates were trained to understand the Holocaust, to interrogate the evils of Hitlerism. Casting the Nazi years into a distant and disdained past was a typical German coping mechanism, so thoroughly ingrained that when Krug begins to wonder what role her own ancestors played in the regime, she’s brought up short to realize just how recent the history really is. Today, NBCC president Kate Tuttle offers her appreciation of autobiography finalist Nora Krug’s Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home (Scribner).īoth of Nora Krug’s parents were born in 1946 into a Germany still reeling from war little wonder that they rarely spoke of it when Krug herself was growing up. In this 31 Books in 30 Days series leading up to the March 14, 2019, announcement of the 2018 National Book Critics Circle award winners, NBCC board members review the thirty-one finalists.

Nora krug belonging a german reckons with history and home