The History of History

A Novel of Berlin

Ida Hattemer-Higgins

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Year: 2011
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9780571256235
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

2002. A young American woman stumbles one morning from the forest outside Berlin - hands dirty, clothes torn. She can remember nothing of the night. She returns to the life she once knew, but soon an enigmatic letter arrives from an unknown doctor claiming to be 'concerned for her fate'. Shortly after, the city of Berlin transforms. Nazi ghosts manifest as preening falcons; buildings turn to flesh.

This is the story of Margaret's descent into madness and her race to recover her lost history - the night in the forest and the chasm that opened in her life as a result. Awash with guilt, Margaret finds her amnesia resonating - more and more clamorously - with two suppressed tragedies of Berlin's darkest hour.

Harrowing and provocative, beguiling in its lyricism and sensuality, The History of History tells a tale of obsessive love, family ruptures, and a nation's grief. And it is an elegy to 'the history of history' - the role of the German past in the psychic life of the present age. With this first novel, third-year-old Ida Hattemer-Higgins establishes herself as as bold, inventive and gifted writer.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Part I – Flesh
• The Persistence of Documents
• The Glass Globe
• Time, Flowers
• The Speculum
• The Slur of Vision
• Magda’s Face
• Privacy and Devotion
• Don Quixote of the SS
• The Whale Ducks
• The Concubine’s Mind
• Sachsenhausen
• The History of History
• Face Tattoos
• Sweet Vitaly
• Tales of the Overripe
• Part II – ROPE
• Redemption Beckoning
• An Expectation of Mirrors
• They Played Hearts
• Roses for Rahel
• The Violence of Nostalgia
• Escape from Berlin
• A Taxonomy of Sins
• Beautiful Albert
• The Children of Grimm
• A Lesson for Hussies Everywhere
• Erich
• The Lake of Fire
• Dreams During Illness
• Part III – TUNNEL
• Iron Waves
• The Return of Tundra
• The Isolation of the Fanatic
• The Doctors of Charité
• The U7
• Reconciliation with Vitaly
• The Glow
• Margaret
• Erich Again
• Arrival of the Valkyries
• Acknowledgements
• Copyright