Belonging

By: Nora Krug

Narrated by: Nora Krug

Length: 3 hrs and 44 mins

Publisher's summary

Named a Best Book of 2018 by The New York Times Critics, The Boston Globe, NPR, The Minneapolis Star-Tribune, The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Time (honorable mention), Library Journal (Best Graphic Novels), and Comics Beat

A revelatory memoir by award-winning artist Nora Krug, telling the story of her attempt to confront the hidden truths of her family’s wartime past in Nazi Germany and to comprehend the forces that have shaped her life, her generation, and history. 

Nora Krug was born decades after the fall of the Nazi regime, but the Second World War cast a long shadow throughout her childhood and youth in the city of Karlsruhe, Germany. For Nora, the simple fact of her German citizenship bound her to the Holocaust and its unspeakable atrocities and left her without a sense of cultural belonging. Yet Nora knew little about her own family’s involvement in the war: though all four grandparents lived through the war, they never spoke of it. 

In her late 30s, after 12 years in the US, Krug realizes that living abroad has only intensified her need to ask the questions she didn’t dare to as a child and young adult. Returning to Germany, she visits archives, conducts research, and interviews family members, uncovering in the process the stories of her maternal grandfather, a driving teacher in Karlsruhe during the war, and her father’s brother, Franz-Karl, who died as a teenage SS soldier in Italy. Her extraordinary quest, spanning continents and generations, pieces together her family’s troubling story and reflects on what it means to be a German of her generation. 

Belonging wrestles with the idea of Heimat, the German word for the place that first forms us, where the sensibilities and identity of one generation pass on to the next. In this memoir, Nora Krug draws on letters, archival material, flea market finds, and photographs to attempt to understand what it means to belong to one’s country and one’s family. A wholly original record of a German woman’s struggle with the weight of catastrophic history, Belonging is also a reflection on the responsibility that we all have as inheritors of our countries’ pasts.  

©2018 Nora Krug (P)2018 Simon & Schuster Audio

wish it was longer!

loved the book. i wish i knew this much about my family. I will probably read it again....now i have to buy some Uhu

Gained wisdom from this book

I think about this book often and it might become something I listen to once a year. So much wisdom to gain here

pertinent for today also

I am glad she read it. It is a terrible history she has to unfold. Follower...will always think of this book, this time period from now on.

Impactful

Listening to this book has opened my heart and mind. This book is a great read for the time we live in.

Read by the author

I really appreciate hearing books in the author’s own words. Because of the personal nature of this story the author’s reading adds a great deal to the listening experience.

Belonging

I have graphic novel but wanted to see how effective listening conveyed the information. There are differences but audible worked for me.

Loved but not ideal for strictly audio listeners

The book is fantastic! As someone of German heritage I appreciated the journey of discovery and the "Things German" sections. I always listen to audio books while I read along with the physical book because of my learning style. BUT if you are going to strictly listen to the audio book you won't get to experience the book as intended. The illustrations are so beautiful and help tell the story in such a unique way. I enjoyed it greatly!