'A compelling story of love and betrayal in the divided Berlin of the 1980s' Sunday Times Best Books of 2019
'A beautifully written, evocative literary thriller set in Berlin shortly before the fall of the Wall' Financial Times Best Books of 2019
'A powerful and moving love story by a writer at the top of his game' John Boyne
In West Berlin in 1989, eighteen-year-old Ralf has just left school and is living a final golden summer with his three best friends. They spend their days swimming, smoking and daydreaming about the future, oblivious to the storm gathering on the other side of the Berlin Wall.
But an unsettling discovery about his family and a meeting with the mysterious Oz shatters everything Ralf thought he knew about love and loyalty. And as old Cold War tensions begin to tear his life apart, he finds himself caught up in a web of deceit, forced to make impossible choices about his country, his family and his heart.
'Necessary and illuminating' Times Literary Supplement
'A writer of genuine accomplishment' Good Book Guide
A story of adoption and queer parenting from the award-winning author of The Spring of Kasper Meier, The Other Hoffmann Sister and An Honest Man
I'm calling because we have a little boy, four weeks old, who needs a family.'
In 2018, after the introduction of marriage equality in Germany, Ben Fergusson and his German husband Tom became one of the first same-sex married couples to adopt in the country. In Tales from the Fatherland Fergusson reflects on his long journey to fatherhood and the social changes that enabled it. He uses his outsider status as both a gay father and a parent adopting in a foreign country to explore the history and sociology of fatherhood and motherhood around the world, queer parenting and adoption and, ultimately, the meaning of family and love.
Tales from the Fatherland makes an impassioned case for the value of diversity in family life, arguing that diverse families are good for all families and that misogyny lies at the heart of many of the struggles of straight and queer families alike.
Shortlisted for The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year 2015, Ben Fergusson's critically acclaimed debut, The Spring of Kasper Meier, was the winner of the Betty Trask Prize 2015 and the HWA 2015 Debut Crown Award. The Other Hoffmann Sister is a gripping, evocative read about two sisters set in pre-WW1 Germany which will appeal to fans of The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry.
For Ingrid Hoffmann the story of her sister's disappearance began in their first weeks in Southwest Africa...
Ingrid Hoffmann has always felt responsible for her sister Margarete and when their family moves to German Southwest Africa in 1902, her anxieties only increase. The casual racism that pervades the German community, the strange relationship between her parents and Baron von Ketz, from whom they bought their land, and the tension with the local tribes all culminate in tragedy when Baron von Ketz is savagely murdered. Baroness von Ketz and their son, Emil, flee with the Hoffmanns as the Baron's attackers burn down the family's farm.
Both families return to Berlin and Ingrid's concerns about Margarete are assuaged when she and Emil von Ketz become engaged on the eve of the First World War. But Margarete disappears on her wedding night at the von Ketz's country house. The mystery of what happened to her sister haunts Ingrid, but as Europe descends into chaos, her hope of discovering the truth becomes ever more distant.
After the war, in the midst of the revolution that brings down the Kaiser and wipes out the aristocracy that her family married into, Ingrid returns to the von Ketzes' crumbling estate determined to find out what really happened to her sister.
Berlin, 1946. Tout est rare. La vérité aussi. La guerre est finie, mais Berlin n'est plus qu'un champ de ruines désolé. La pénurie est générale, les Berlinois manquent de tout : nourriture, vêtements, tabac... Les Allemands tentent de subsister par tous les moyens, à l'image de Kasper Meier qui subvient à ses besoins et ceux de son père âgé en trafiquant au marché noir. Pour peu que ses clients soient prêts à y mettre le prix, il peut trouver tout ce qu'on lui demande. Y compris des personnes « disparues ». Lorsque Kasper voit arriver chez lui Eva, qui cherche à retrouver un pilote britannique, il refuse de s'immiscer dans les affaires militaires, malgré la sympathie qu'il ne peut s'empêcher d'éprouver pour la jeune femme. Mais Eva s'y est préparée : Kasper a des secrets, elle les connaît et elle est prête à s'en servir pour obtenir ce qu'elle veut. Entraîné au coeur d'un univers de complot dont il n'aurait jamais soupçonné l'existence, constamment surveillé, Kasper sillonne pour se recherche les rues de la ville encore ébranlée par les horreurs de la guerre et de la défaite.
'He had seen the British soldiers arrive and lead them out through the courtyard: cheats, prostitutes, liars, war criminals, but mostly people like him - half-starved blackmarketeers lying about who they shared their rooms with.'
Kasper Meier lives in Berlin - the city and its people broken by war. He scrabbles to get by, finding things that people need: cigarettes, information, other people.
A stranger approaches Kasper in a makeshift cafe, seeking the whereabouts of a painting by Gustav Klimt. Kasper is out of his depth, but the promise of goods and the man's menacing threats leave him with no choice but to track it down.
The search leads him to Frau Roland and Berlin-Tempelhof, where she spends hours watching the aeroplanes arriving and departing. What is she waiting for? Where is the painting? And is Kasper's life in danger?
In this intriguing and compelling short story, Ben Fergusson introduces us to the world of post-war Berlin and provides a taste of his extraordinary debut novel, The Spring of Kasper Meier, which is published in hardback and ebook in July 2014.
Fergusson has already won two awards for this gripping and atmospheric debut, a thriller set amid the rubble of a defeated Berlin in 1945...Original and highly accomplished' Sunday Times
Shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award 2015
Berlin, 1946. Everything is in short supply. Including the truth.
The war is over, but Berlin is a desolate sea of rubble. There is a shortage of everything: food, clothing, tobacco. The local population is scrabbling to get by. Kasper Meier is one of these Germans, and his solution is to trade on the black market to feed himself and his elderly father. He can find anything that people need, for the right price.
When a young woman, Eva, arrives at Kasper's door seeking the whereabouts of a British pilot, he feels a reluctant sympathy for her but won't interfere in military affairs. But Eva knows Kasper has secrets, and she'll use them to get what she wants. As a net of deceit, lies and betrayal falls around him, Kasper begins to understand that the seemingly random killings of members of the occupying forces are connected to his own situation. He must work out who is behind Eva's demands, and why...
A gripping literary thriller that will captivate fans of Joseph Kanon and Hans Fallada.
Readers are saying:
'A remarkable, dark, deep and disturbing novel'
'Brilliantly realised both in the evocation of Berlin and in the story line. Both poignant and thrilling'
'What an amazing book - I was engrossed'
'A terrific novel. Thoughtful, powerful writing serving an original and compelling plot'
'Utterly enthralling
