To Greet the Sun

Otto Eisinger, an elderly German emigre living alone in Brazil, attempts to thwart a pair of armed robbers and is brutally beaten. When the Brazilian media get hold of the CCTV footage, the old man instantly becomes a national hero. As he recuperates in hospital, Otto is visited by his housekeeper's grandson, Pietro, an idealistic young journalist eager to understand the motives for his heroic act of defiance. Heavily dosed with morphine and prompted by the uncanny resemblance between Pietro and Siggi, the closest friend of his adolescence in 1940s Germany, Otto begins to access memories that he has spent a lifetime suppressing and whose meaning he has still not fully understood. To Greet the Sun is a serious and richly imaginative attempt to understand what it was like to grow up under the Nazi regime. It is at once a totally convincing coming-of-age story, a psychological study of repressed trauma, and not least a moving and frequently comic account of an unlikely friendship that bridges continents and generations. AUTHOR: Claus von Bohlen is the author of Who is Charlie Conti? He is currently studying psychology in Los Angeles. SELLING POINTS: . Original and engaging literary fiction with a strong 'hook' . The novel is based on extensive research into the experience of children and adolescents in Hitler's Germany