#Book Review Friday – Time to Let Go by Christoph Fischer

Posted on June 27, 2014 by P. C. Zick

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I’m used to being transported to another era when I read a novel by Christoph Fischer. Set in England, his latest offering, Time to Let Go, transports the reader, not through the years, but into the lives of one family dealing with the splintered effects of Alzheimers.

I’ve lost several relatives and friends to this devastating disease. I’m familiar with the stages for the patient and the ramifications on the care givers. And so is Christoph Fischer in his portrayal of Biddy Korhonen and her family members dealing with her descent into Alzheimers.

Mr. Fischer shows the various ways individuals deal with the illness. There’s the husband Walter who depends upon the routine and regimen of a scheduled life to keep his wife from falling into a deeper stage. He can keep control of the situation to a certain extent, only as far as Biddy’s mind will allow it. Nothing can bring her back to the loving wife she’d always been. When he can’t control his wife’s failings, he absorbs himself in creating a book of family memories. He can control what is remembered and how much is revealed about the individuals who make up the Finnish branch of the Korhonen family.

Daughter Hanna uses the mother’s illness as a chance to come home and hide out from the realities of her life as an airline stewardess when things go horribly wrong on her last flight. Her casual attitude toward schedules and regimens clashes with her father’s grip on his life with Biddy. Hanna runs into problems with this casualness, yet there are times when Biddy seems so happy with the change.

It’s all here in this novel, and it’s done in such a way that the reader is caught up in the lives of the Krohonen’s and rooting for the family to finally communicate with one another before it’s too late. I found myself agreeing with both sides in the debate on how to handle Biddy’s situation. Since I’ve seen the terrific toll Alzhemiers takes, I understand the complicated feelings and situations that arise. Mr. Fischer handles it deftly and with sympathy for both Hanna and Walter and Biddy. No one is right, and no one is wrong.

As he does with his historical novels set in the first half of the twentieth century in eastern Europe, Mr. Fischer manages to bring in the prejudices of a generation raised with biases toward people of different religions, races, and ideologies. It’s not an indictment of older generations, but it is a reality best met with honesty and acceptance.

Thank you, Christoph Fischer, for once again bringing us a work of fiction that asks us to examine our beliefs and open our minds to honest communication with those we love the most.

To purchase Time to Let Go, click on the cover below.

Disclosure: I was given an advance review copy in exchange for an honest review.

Author Wednesday – Christoph Fischer

Posted on June 18, 2014 by P. C. Zick

Welcome to Author Wednesday. Today I welcome back Christoph Fischer for a guest post about his latest release A Time to Let Go. Christoph’s three other novels are set in Eastern Europe during the years of the Great Wars, and offer glimpses into what it was like for people of all gender, religion (or lack thereof), cultural heritage, and sexual preferences. The Three Nations Trilogy (The Luck of the Weissensteiners, Sebastian, and Black Eagle Inn) provide an excellent overview of life before, during, and after war.

However, his latest book A Time to Let Go takes a different path. Set in contemporary times in England, the book explores the life of one family as they deal with the onset of Alzheimers of Biddy, the mother and wife of the Korhonen family. In this guest post, Christoph writes about how and why this story was written. Please watch for my review of Time to Let Go on Book Review Friday.

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How Time to Let Go Came to Be

by Christoph Fischer

The Real Biddy Korhonen

I grew up with only a few friends and with two older siblings who were miles ahead of me in their lives. My mother was a busy woman, and so I spent a lot of time at my aunt’s house. She had always wanted to raise four children but lost one child at birth. Her other three children were much older and didn’t need her much anymore, so my visits to her house filled a gap for her, in the same way, her attention to me filled a need in me. A match made in heaven.

Philomena, or Minna, as we called her, remained a source of happiness and encouragement throughout my life. I was always welcomed and treated like a precious gift. She smoked, but she outlived both of her sisters who were taken in their forties by cancer.

In her late seventies, Minna was diagnosed with Alzheimers disease. At least she was alive, I thought, belittling her misfortune without much awareness.

The next time I saw her, her trademark happiness seemed far away. She was crying bitterly because she had lost her hearing aid, a very expensive one, too. Suddenly her life seemed to revolve around retrieving things. She was spared the physical pain of her sisters, but she suffered severe mental torture.

She fortunately reached a happier stage as medication and care helped reduce the misery in her life, but the attention she needed was a huge toll to the family. Despite her memory loss, she seemed to vaguely recognize me; me, the “child” who lived abroad and who rarely came to visit. She had not lost her warmth and happiness, or maybe she had just regained it after the bad patch in the early stages.

Very recently, I saw her again, almost unrecognizable: withdrawn, very unresponsive, and almost reduced to basic functioning. Surprisingly, she could still read, and when I came to see her for a second time her eyes shone as if she did recognize me. I made an emotional goodbye to her, and her hand was shaking as she listened to my speech. She even responded by talking, using words that didn’t fit exactly, but which expressed an emotion similar to what one would expect from a loving aunt in such a situation.

With her loving kindness in mind, I created Biddy, the mother in Time to Let Go, a selfless, giving woman, who even in her illness manages to show her innate kindness. I know it would be wrong to praise her for a gift that many other patients do not have, through no fault of their own. Losing one’s memory and control of one’s life is a terrible thing that you can only understand when it happens to you.

Time to Let Go is a tribute to my brave aunt and to the wonderful people who help make her life dignified and as happy as is possible.

Alzheimers

My book is inspired by personal experiences with sufferers from the disease. Nowadays, almost everyone knows someone who has relatives with Alzheimers and gradually stories and anecdotes about these patients have entered the social dinner party circuit and become common knowledge.

Alzheimers is a dreadful disease that cannot be easily understood in its gravity and the complex, frustrating, and far-reaching consequences for the victims and their families. There are different stages of the disease as it progresses and patients can move through them at different paces and in varying intensity. My book does not attempt to be a complete representation or a manual of how to deal with the disease. The illness affects every patient differently, and there are many stories to tell and many aspects to cover. I hope that I can bring some of those issues to the surface and help make the gravity of the disease more prominent. However, I decided to stay firmly in fiction and family drama territory, and not to write a dramatized documentary on the subject.

I have witnessed several different approaches to handling the disease by both individuals and entire families, and I have learned that the people involved in every case need to work out what is best for them. In my book, a family works out their particular approach, which is right for them. They have different ideas about it and need to battle it out. These clashes fascinated me, and I felt they were worth exploring.

Issues of caring at home, mobile-care assistance, or institutionalizing patients are personal and, depending on where in the world you are, every family has very different options or limitations. The ending in my book must be seen in that context: as an individual “best” solution that uniquely fits the Korhonen family.

As point of first reference and for a more comprehensive and scientific overview of information and help available, I recommend: http://www.alzheimers.org.uk/ in the UK, and http://www.alz.org/ in the United States.

There are support groups, help lines, and many other sources available in most countries, which will be able to advise specifically for each individual situation.

I can also recommend Because We Care by Fran Lewis. This fantastic book has a comprehensive appendix with more or less everything you need to know about the disease: Its stages, personal advice on caring, information, tools and help available in the United States.

For consistency, I exclusively used material relating to a medium-advanced stage of the disease. To protect the privacy and dignity of the patients that inspired the story, I have altered all of the events and used both first- and second-hand experiences and anecdotes. Nothing in this book has actually happened in that way. Apart from some outer parallels between my characters and patients I witnessed, any similarities with real people, alive or dead, are coincidental and unintended.

Airlines

The airline plot is not based on any real incident but is inspired by my own imagination. I used to work for an airline, and so naturally, much of Hanna’s life is based on my own experience of fifteen years flying. I lived with the awareness that every time a call bell goes off on a plane this could be a matter of life and death. What happens to Hanna in the book has never happened to me or anyone close to me. My flying life was not that extraordinary. Fortunately.

But every year airline crew are retrained in emergency procedures and aviation medicine, and at least during those intense yearly re-training sessions your mind cannot help considering the possibilities of such events.

The modern trend of the “suing- and compensation-culture” and the extent of it in some cases worries me a little, which is why some of that concern found its way into the book.

The lifestyle of cabin crew and pilots is often falsely glorified as a glamorous string of free holidays and leisure. A recent crew strike in the UK has brought the profession into disrepute in the media, representing them as fat cats and lazy bones. My book aims to shed a bit of light on the realities of flying. I enjoyed the life and would not want to miss the experience, but it is a tough life that demands huge personal sacrifices and flexibility, sleep deprivation on a massive scale, and exposure to aggressive and abusive behaviour by a consumerist clientele. In the global trend of cost cutting, salaries are going down and what used to be a career is at risk of becoming a minimum-wage job handed to people who have no experience and who have no incentive to give it their all.

My book is a tribute to my former colleagues in the airline industry personnel, who, in my opinion, are unsung heroes and a bunch of wonderful, hard-working and very caring people.

Memory

What makes Alzheimers’ so terrible? What is it that makes a memory so important to one’s life that people compare its horrors to pain-inflicting diseases such as cancer? You are alive and physically well, you eat and function as a human, but as an Alzheimer patient, you are bound to be suffering, frustrated, depressed and unhappy.

Of course, it is ridiculous to compare the two diseases, but while a cancer patient still has their awareness and choices, the Alzheimer sufferer is losing the core of their being, and everything they ever were.

How can you define yourself if you cannot remember? You have had children, but you won’t recognize them. You won awards, had a successful career, made people happy, but you don’t know any of it. Who are you and what are you doing on the planet? Who are the people around you? As the disease progresses, these things become more intense and you can live in a mental prison of fear and disorientation. Your brain won’t do as you want it to. The fear of losing it altogether, for some is impossible to bear. You are about to lose everything that was ever precious to you.

That thought is frightening to all of us. It can happen to all of us. The worst stage seems to be when patients still notice that something is wrong. We all know how annoying it is when we just put something down and don’t remember where. Imagine that happening to you all the time, every day, and you get an idea of how it might feel. The caretakers see their loved ones slowly drift away into a stranger.

Biddy’s husband Walter in my novel becomes obsessed with preserving memories—his own and others. He begins to write a family chronicle as a constructive outlet for his fears. He is an important character with his musings about preserving knowledge, memories, and facts, and he allowed me to bring in thoughts about the disease on a different and more reflective level.

I hope that I have managed to write about more than just the clinical side of the disease. I stuck to the early stages of Alzheimers in the story because it gave me the best opportunities to work these thoughts into the story. It allows me to look back at Biddy’s past but with still a lot of hope.

About Christoph: Christoph Fischer was born in Germany as the son of a Sudeten-German father and a Bavarian mother. Not a full local in the eyes and ears of his peers he developed an ambiguous sense of belonging and home in Bavaria. He moved to Hamburg in pursuit of his studies and to lead a life of literary indulgence. After a few years he moved on to the UK where he is still resident today.

Links – United States (click on title for Amazon page):

Time to Let Go

The Luck of the Weissensteiners

Sebastian

The Black Eagle Inn

Links – UK (click on title for Amazon page):

Time to Let Go

The Luck of the Weissensteiners

Sebastian

The Black Eagle Inn

Book Review Friday – The Bone Church

Posted on May 30, 2014 by P. C. Zick

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The Bone Church by Victoria Dougherty with its suspenseful moments and supernatural whispers places it in a unique category of historical fiction.

Set in Czechoslovakia between the years of 1943 to 1956, the characters are in constant danger, and one-step away from death throughout the entire book. Even when World War II ends, and Nazi Germany no longer controls the destiny of the Czech people, another world power brings a different set of troubles to the Eastern European country. It’s not certain if the occupation by the Soviet Union is an improvement upon the lives of the already downtrodden. If they managed to escape the war, it was only to end up in another type of nightmare where anyone—lovers, relatives, nuns—might end up as a spy and an enemy.

In the world portrayed by Ms. Dougherty, the characters of Felix and Magdalena are at first innocents caught in an evil and dangerous world. But with each betrayal and with every death, they lose their innocence as they scratch their way to survival.

The plight of Jews and gypsies provide the reader no surprises here; but the addition of priests, sculptors, and bankers into the complicated plot woven by the author, lend an air of constant tension to the book.

The plot moves back and forth from 1943-44 to 1956 to give just enough of a hint of what is to come and how they got where they are. Ms. Dougherty is careful to provide the chapter headings with dates and locations so the reader can easily move from one setting to the other. There’s no time to figure out the year or setting because the action never lets up in either time.

When the violence and trickery become overwhelming, the plot shifts to the paranormal where the spirits of those gone before come again to help give hope and advice to Felix and Magdalena. The reference of the Bone Church comes from a real church where human bones decorate the inside of the church. Ms. Dougherty describes in horrifying detail the interior from Felix’s point of view when he first sees it: “Nearly every part of the interior gleamed like the new teeth of an infant. Bones from some 30,000 dead Christians lay configured into pyramids, light fixtures, chandeliers, pinnacles, coats of arms, an altar, and a monstrous hydra of ribs and skulls that sat atop an intact spinal column.”

The terrifying place for Felix soon turns into his savior. The book comes full circle when the bones of one of the characters find its way to the Bone Church finally to find peace.

Ms. Dougherty’s imagery stands out from the heaviness of the plot’s action. I was captivated from the beginning with a description of Palestine, where Magdalena had visited as a child.

“The desert there had seemed to her a beautiful sleeping woman. If the mountains were her body, the desert was the palm of her hand, cracked with the lines of her destiny. The hot air was her breath.”

If you’re a fan of historical fiction, this book provides yet another experience of a dark time in Eastern European history. If you love suspenseful thrillers with spies lurking around every corner, then The Bone Church will surely keep you turning the page. And if you love a tale with paranormal assistance, you find it here. I hit the jackpot because I love all three of those elements within fiction.

Click here to purchase The Bone Church on Amazon.

#Book Review Friday – Sebastian by Christoph Fischer

Posted on November 1, 2013 by P. C. Zick

@PCZick

It took me some time to understand why the title of this book is Sebastian. The title character doesn’t appear very often, but his presence is felt in the stories of those–mostly women–around him.

Sebastian, Christoph Fischer’s second novel in the Three Nations Trilogy, is set in Vienna and Galicia in Central Europe. His first book in the trilogy, The Luck of the Weissensteiners, is set in Eastern Europe prior, during, and after World War II. Once again, he’s written a historical account of life as lived by Jews who hide or abandon their cultural and religious heritage because of fear of prosecution, and it also explores the lives of gentiles who are closely aligned with the Jewish community. The lives of the characters, including Sebastian, create a personal view as the war plays out in the backdrop. The war and all its residual effects are felt in the lives of Sebastian’s immediate family and by those that circle him peripherally. No one is particularly religious in both of the books, so it comes as a shock to the characters to be divided along those lines. It forces them to do things they aren’t proud of, such as shunning someone because of their heritage or their association with someone of a particular background.

Not only is war’s turmoil shown through the individuals, but the popular culture is recounted as well. The Glueck family draws Sebastian’s mother, Vera, into experiments with psychoanalysis, which is the “in” thing as Freud emerges on the scene with some outlandish notions about the mind. The occult and seances make an appearance, too. Vera and others seek out meduims to attempt to learn the fate of their husbands and sons sent off to war. Fischer explores these topics and presents both sides as represented by the characters. He doesn’t take a side on these issues, but rather provides the reader with provocative thought to ponder the beliefs presented, which are generally disdained by the scientists of the day.

World War I goes on around and outside of the lives of Sebatian’s extended group, but Vienna remains relatively safe from the war raging just outside its borders.

I’m still thinking of the characters and their inability to communicate with one another, which leads to some unnecessary suffering and missed cues. The novel speaks volumes about this issue as lovers are star-crossed until they finally open up and tell the truth. While the communication doesn’t bring the couple together, it does provide a resolution to the mixed up wires. T

As with his first book in this trilogy, I was shaken out of my ethnocentric self. This time I witnessed the war and its impact by those living through it. The entry of the United States into the fray is nothing more than a blimp on the overall map of the war fought on the soil of Fischer’s setting. The history of the Jews prior to World War I shows that for centuries they feared and suffered at the hands of those in power, particularly in Eastern Europe. Fischer sets the stage for what will happen in the next two decades. Borders and cultures are crossed, bisected, and in some cases, obliterated.

Fischer’s attention to the real life problems caused by war is impeccable. I love that he can relate history without resorting to boring textbook discourse. The individuals’ stories show the harsh reality of what happens to the people actually put at risk during war. We’re not privvy to the high-level meetings of the political puppets holding all the strings, but the impact of those decisions are felt through lack of food and resources to survive.

If you are a lover of history brought to life through characters, I recommend reading Fischer’s novel from the Three Nations Trilogy. You’ll learn as well as become compelled to follow the characters to the final resolution, at least for that small portion of history.

Fischer has now released the final book in the trilogy, The Black Eagle Inn, which I hope to read soon. The third book explores post-World War II life in Eastern Europe.

Book Review Friday – The Luck of the Weissensteiners (Book 1 of The Three Nations Trilogy)

Posted on August 30, 2013 by P. C. Zick

By Patricia Zick @PCZick

I interviewed Christoph Fischer in June on Author Wednesday. Today I review his novel The Luck of the Weissensteiners.

History of the twentieth century was one of my major areas of study in college. However, the history I studied presented an ethnocentric view of World War II. Of course, I know about Hitler’s rise to power, and the major steps he took in Europe prior to our entry into the war. I understood the political and social ramifications. I understood the uneasy alliance of Germany, Italy, and Japan. But I only knew of these histories from the perspective of the first, isolationist United States, and then, as the full-speed ahead entry into the war heroes who saved the world from the evil Axis powers.

Reading Christoph Fischer’s The Luck of the Weissensteiners presented another view of that period through the camera lens of people living in Eastern Europe. The book shows people from all the different perspectives before, during, and after the war. It’s an eye-opening read to learn that the United States wasn’t the center of this war. In the lives of these ordinary folks, the United States played an almost peripheral role.

The Luck of the Weissensteiners exposes how the Eastern Europeans reacted with a wide range of attitudes and actions as the war tore apart families and friends and allowed no trust to exist in all the varied relationships. There may have been a world war taking place on the larger stage, but for the characters in Fischer’s novel, it is a civil war being fought, and the lines are blurred and often changing, depending on who’s in charge.

Jews and Gentiles fall in love and marry, which creates a problem when Hitler’s master plan begins to take effect, even in countries where he’s not invaded. . .yet. The propaganda used to smear the very genes of Jews causes one husband to question the moral integrity of his wife. He buys the line of inherently weak genes so much he even takes their son away – a son who is Aryan in looks, leaving behind his Jewish wife and their unborn child. The atmosphere of fear changes people, oftentimes not for the better.

Through it, all one family stands strong.

This book’s retelling of the history of this period in Europe is personalized through the characters that represent a cross section of the lives impacted by the atrocities of war. Jews, Gentiles, Germans, Slovakians, lesbians, and traitors all point to one direction. War never makes much sense when the individual lives of its victims are examined. Neither side wins when people are persecuted for their religion, political beliefs, nationality, or sexual orientations.

It’s a sad commentary on the human condition when a people are forced to hide their identities behind forged passports, and then forced to throw away the forgeries to appease the winning side. When it comes down to it in the aftermath of the war and the liberation of Europe, all individuals are suspect, and mankind is taken down a notch.

Christoph Fischer has written an important book for its historical perspective. He personified the vagaries of war through the fictional characters. At times, it reads like a history book, but before it bogs down into a lesson in civics, he comes back to the individuals experiencing the actual effects of the persecution.

As always, we study and examine the past so we don’t forget it. As long as genocide exists in the world, we must do as Fischer has done in his novel – remind us, and remind us again, that our faith, our color, our language, and our life choices should matter not a wit. In the end, it’s our integrity and how we treat others that matters the most.

Thank you, Christoph, for writing this important book to remind us never to repeat the mistakes of the past.

Author Wednesday – Christoph Fischer

Posted on June 26, 2013 by P. C. Zick

Welcome to Author Wednesday. Today, I’m happy to interview Christoph Fischer, an author and fellow blogger and reviewer. Christoph is a great supporter of the Indie Author, and he’s introduced me to many wonderful books and authors over the past year. He writes historical fiction. He’s published the first two novels in his Three Nations Trilogy, The Luck of the Weissensteiners and most recently, Sebastian. He’s working on the third book in the series, The Farm in Heimkirchen (working title).

Hello, Christoph. Welcome to Author Wednesday. I’m curious how you might describe yourself in third person. Write a paragraph as if you were a reporter writing about you for a newspaper article on up and coming authors.

Christoph Fischer is a new author who has taken on an ambitious project of writing three historical novels set in different nations to discuss the subjects of Nation and identity. In his first installment, The Luck of The Weissensteiners, he takes us to Slovakia in the 1930s and sheds light on complex political situation while telling the story of one Jewish family from 1933 until 1946. In Sebastian, he moves back in time to the Vienna of 1913 and tells how a different family in a different era is confronted with similar themes, albeit under less extreme circumstances. As a German expat living in the UK and having family roots in Eastern Europe, Fischer’s own experiences clearly add to the tone of his writing.

My inspiration for my books often comes from others who’ve inspired me. Who has most influenced your writing and why?

German writers such as Siegfried Lenz and Stefan Zweig certainly left their mark on me. More recently, Lionel Shriver, Christos Tsiolkas, and Richard Zimler are authors whose work I absolutely adore.

Lately, I have been reading more independent writers and have learned about style and plotting from Paulette Mahurin, Bernice L. Rocque, Revital Shiri-Horowitz, and Angella Graff.

Are you planning to continue writing in historical fiction?

The books in my Three Nations Trilogy are all historical novels, and I have already written another historical novel since. History is a huge field and choosing a different time or place creates a challenge for the writer and adds an extra interest to a story, so I am rather fond of the idea of writing some more in the future.

I am however interested in a lot of other subjects too, where a contemporary setting is more apt. I have drafts of novels about Alzheimer’s and mental health, which might be classified as literary fiction (such a big word, I hardly dare use it). They are set in modern times because general awareness of these issues would not have been well developed in previous times.

What’s the best thing said about one of your books by a reviewer?

It is impossible to rank or compare reviews or compliments. An in-depth analysis and intellectual applause in my view is no better than a simple “I loved it!” if the reader really means it. Here is one excerpt from one review for The Luck of the Weissensteiners.

“Ethnic disrespect, hate, and violence have gone on for centuries in central and eastern Europe. Until reading this book, though, I did not understand how finely differentiated these forces were.”

I chose this quote because it was rewarding to see a reader so engaged that they felt their perspective had changed a little.

I agree with your philosophy on reviews. When the reviewer really understands, it’s an important review. What advice can you give to other writers about receiving a bad review?

Every review only reflects one person’s perception of a book. What is great to one reader is off putting to the next. It is all about finding your target audience. My books would not go down well in a sci-fi reading group. Also, read the bad reviews for critically acclaimed novels on Amazon and you will find that every single author gets bad press as well. You cannot please everyone. Try to see through the parts that are hurtful and use the criticism as a chance to improve.

Excellent advice, Christoph. Now let’s talk a bit about your latest release. What is the message conveyed in Sebastian?

The message I try to convey in Sebastian is that nobody should be or feel second best, and that you should always try to be your best and be content with that. The uncertain times intensified the insecurities of many of my characters; Sebastian has lost a limb and has even more confidence issues to fight.

Explain how Sebastian was conceived in your imagination.

The book is loosely based on my grandfather who had lost one leg in similar circumstances to Sebastian in the 1930s. He and my grandmother divorced while she was pregnant with my father. I never got to know why or how, and I never met him before he died. He, his new family and my father’s older sister were stuck on the other side of the Berlin Wall. I knew one side of the story, but in the 1990s my aunt told me another version of events. Between those two stories my imagination ran wild.

My father had a friend who had lost a leg in the war and as a child I was both fascinated by him and scared of him. I wondered how he would find love with such a “handicap.” When I heard that my grandfather had the same misfortune but had married twice, easily it got me thinking and that became a central part of this book.

As a gay man who grew up in a very Catholic area of Germany, I brought a lot of my own self-esteem issues to the character Sebastian; the loving picture that my aunt drew about my grandfather found itself into the character of Sebastian’s grandfather, Oscar, in the book.

Without giving us a spoiler, tell us a little bit about your favorite scene in Sebastian.

My favorite scene in the book is an argument between Sebastian’s grandparents. It is one of the more humorous scenes, and I hope it shows the difficult relationship between an unlikely couple who are nevertheless in love with each other and need each other and end up having silly but for others often entertaining rows.

I love this next question because I often wonder about it myself. If you could invite two other authors over to your house for dinner, who would you choose and why.

I have met a lot of other authors online and never seen them in person. M.C.V. Egan, author of The Bridge of Deaths seems like a very interesting and multi-facetted character, and I would love to fly her over the Atlantic for dinner. The other person I would love to meet is Paulette Mahurin, another great and acclaimed Indie Author friend whose writing (The Persecution of Mildred Dunlap) I find very inspiring.

Is there one book or author with whom you identify or hold up as your standard-bearer?

Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts is one of my all-time favourites. His love for India, his exploration of guilt and redemption and his excellent characters get me to read the book at least once a year.

About Christoph Fischer – Christoph Fischer was born in Germany, near the Austrian border, as the son of a Sudeten-German father and a Bavarian mother. Not a full local in the eyes and ears of his peers, he developed an ambiguous sense of belonging and home in Bavaria, which has led to his interest in the concept of Nations, individuals, and communal culture, some of the central themes of The Three Nations Trilogy.
He moved to Hamburg, London, Brighton, and Bath, where he is still a resident today.
The Luck of The Weissensteiners is his first book and was published in November 2012.
Sebastian in May 2013.He has written several other novels which are in the later stages of editing and finalization.