Return to Berlin

‘Masterful, magnificent. A passionate story of survival. This story will stay with me for a long time’ Heather Morris, bestselling author of The Tattooist of Auschwitz on A Bookshop in Paris

A young German Jewish woman returns to Allied Occupied Berlin from America to face the past and unexpected future.
Young Meike ‘Millie’ Mosbach and her brother David escape Berlin just before the horror of Kristallnacht, leaving their parents and little sister to follow them to America. But their family never arrives.

After the war they return to a shattered city, hoping against hope to find their family. Postwar Berlin is a wild west where drunken soldiers brawl, spies ply their trade and ‘werewolves’ – unrepentant Nazis – scheme to rise again.

Consumed with rage at her former country, Millie’s job rooting out Nazis from publishing seems the perfect outlet. But her anger begins to thaw as she is faced with the reality of what the war has done to everyone, guilty at their own good fortune. Everyone except for Millie’s boss, Major Harry Sutton, who seems too eager to be fair to the Germans and far too perceptive about Millie.

In the rubble of postwar Berlin, Millie is forced to confront a devastating secret and find the courage to embrace love – and a new beginning.

Atmospheric and page-turning, Return to Berlin is a story of love, survival, and forgiveness of others and of self.
A deeply satisfying and truly adult novelMargot Livesey, author of The Flight of Gemma Hardy
A gorgeous, shattering story that could not be more timely about the dark damage of hatred and the persistence of love Caroline Leavitt, author of Is This Tomorrow