"Profound . . . comic . . . unconventional . . . In Dunthorne’s hands, these disparate moments of bearing witness—sometimes in the most literal way—add up to a remarkable, strange, and complicated story, full of the shame and humor a lesser memoir might have avoided." —New York Times

"[A] lively memoir . . . At once a family history and an account of the author’s piecing together of that history." —The New Yorker

"[A] bracing memoir [that] confronts us with a family legacy as unsettling as the warning sign posted outside the fenced-off Orgacid poison factory: 'Risk of death—Do not enter.'" —Wall Street Journal

“A slippery marvel. . . . Dunthorne’s voice—affable, warm, wry—casts a spell . . . The book plays out as a tangled investigation of complicity, courage, and cowardice [and] a quixotic voyage into the heart of 20th-century darkness.” —Observer (UK)

"The best book I’ve read in the past year. . . . Dunthorne brings distinction and finesse to every sentence, such as when he speaks of the old man’s depression, 'washing dishes as if trying to drown them.' A masterpiece." —Andrew O'Hagan, Financial Times

"It seems like every family has a bit of ancestral folklore, and Joe Dunthorne’s is better than most. . . . [Dunthorne] is an excellent companion throughout, telling the story with a mix of comic timing, wry self-depreciation, and genuine appreciation for the strange and difficult lives people live." —Chicago Tribune

"[Dunthorne's] animated narrative voice is often funny without ever seeming facile or irreverent, and without trivializing—or losing sight of—the gravity of his subject. . . . Beneath the book’s lively surface are a number of complex and serious themes: courage, self-delusion, conscience, the unreliability of memory, and the folly of believing romantic family stories about the past." —New York Review of Books

"The Welsh-born novelist seeks to unearth, and untangle, one particularly gnarled root of his family tree . . . Dunthorne's attempt to understand this painful paradox interweaves memoir, archival research, travelogue and a fair bit of family therapy.” —NPR

“Spry, self-aware, irresistible . . . Dunthorne carefully fillets his vast material for the most vivid details. . . . This is a valuable account which seeks neither to praise [its protagonist] nor to bury him.” —Financial Times

“Enigmatic, self-deprecating, enjoyable. . . . [Dunthorne] brings a novelist's eye for detail.” —Sunday Times Culture (UK)

“In this excellent family memoir, Dunthorne digs down through layers of memory and myth to uncover an unsettling story. . . . Children of Radium is a powerful exploration of the struggle to separate truth from the stories we want to believe. Dunthorne interrogates not just the omissions and self-deceptions in his great-grandfather's memoir, but also his own complicated motivations for revisiting his familial past. A triumph of stylish prose, the book tackles dark subject matter with moral precision and a surprisingly keen sense of humour.” —Irish Times

"Truly moving. . . . This is a story of cumulative denialism [and] many unanswerable questions." —Literary Review (UK)

"A funny and moving family history that troubles even as it entertains." —Monocle (UK)

"Riveting . . . Dunthorne strikes a near-perfect balance of history and personal reflection, and his questions about Merzbacher’s moral dilemmas resonate. This is a must-read." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"A brave and beautiful memoir, Joe Dunthorne’s incisive exploration of his family history unearths stunning discoveries and takes the reader on a remarkable adventure that spans countries and resonates across generations. I have read many memoirs of the war and have never encountered anything like this. Lyrical but unflinching, this is an extraordinary book." —Ariana Neumann, New York Times bestselling author of When Time Stopped

"[A] beautifully rendered personal history, written with mature perspective as well as tenderness, crossing generations and traversing countries to expose the truth beneath the trauma and the travail of his great-grandfather’s life . . . It is warm and at times even radiant. . . . Dunthorne’s gently self-deprecating approach and his deep and disciplined research combine to make a very satisfying memoir." —Jewish Book Council

"Surprisingly funny as well as illuminating . . . Dunthorne brings his literary skills to the medium, offering us a story with more twists and turns than a road on the Amalfi Coast. There is also a delicious set of constantly-evolving characters." —Haaretz

"The memoir displays Dunthorne’s gift for wry understatement and his doggedness as a researcher." —Los Angeles Times

"Dunthorne’s winding story embraces other family members whose histories were less freighted with guilt, but [his great-grandfather] Siegfried’s lies at its heart as a cautionary tale of accommodating evil. A thoughtful, troubling addition to the literature of the Holocaust." —Kirkus Reviews

"[A] mind-spinning family history. . . . Rueful, determined, and funny, Dunthorne presents a galvanizing and revelatory saga of prickly personalities, desperation, denial, and the overriding drive to survive." —Booklist

"Children of Radium is an exhilarating exploration of legacy. Unburying family secrets—especially secrets this big, this profound—is painstaking and heartbreaking work. In the hands of a lesser writer, a story like this would collapse, become just a mush of uncertainty. But Dunthorne is a masterful guide, surefooted and diligent and honest and funny. We are with him, enthralled, every step of the way." —Menachem Kaiser, author of Plunder: A Memoir of Family Property and Nazi Treasure

"A riveting tentacular story . . . a nimble, questioning, entertaining book." —Times Literary Supplement (UK)

"Unusual and very readable . . . Dunthorne’s careful attention to detail will hold the reader’s attention as he tries to determine what is true, partially true or false about his family’s past." —BookPage

"An extraordinary and unexpected journey; one finely and gently crafted." —Philippe Sands, author of The Ratline: The Exalted Life and Mysterious Death of a Nazi Fugitive

2025-01-17
A descendant charts a Jewish family’s unusual course through the years of the Third Reich.

In 1938, Adolf Hitler ordered that the Munich synagogue be demolished, and its rubble was bulldozed into the Isar river. Years later, writes English novelist Dunthorne, workmen noticed that the “rubble buried in the riverbed was unusually ornate” and began the long course of excavating it to restore the building. It’s a perfect metaphor for his book, which, among many other storylines, charts his Jewish great-grandfather’s problematic career as a chemical manufacturer who promoted the received wisdom of the day that thorium and other radioactive elements constituted “a miracle cure and the source of mysterious powers,” used as ingredients in things as various as toothpaste, energy drinks, and even lingerie. Great-grandfather Siegfried also made poisonous gases, some quite diabolical: One penetrated a gas mask and prompted retching, driving the wearer to take off the mask and inhale still more deadly components. Siegfried’s laboratory was in Oranienburg, a center not just of scientific research but also of the SS, the chemical plant next door to a concentration camp, and a production facility that made uranium oxide for the secret Nazi atomic bomb project. Siegfried and his family left for Turkey when anti-Jewish laws were promulgated, but in exile he still worked for the chemical firm, one of whose poisonous gases was used against Kurds in eastern Turkey, killing some 13,160 civilians around the town of Dersim, which, Dunthorne writes, “has led to rumors that the Nazis saw Dersim as a proof of concept.” That Siegfried was aware of the implications of his work may have led, after he emigrated to the U.S., to a mental breakdown. Dunthorne’s winding story embraces other family members whose histories were less freighted with guilt, but Siegfried’s lies at its heart as a cautionary tale of accommodating evil.

A thoughtful, troubling addition to the literature of the Holocaust.