All for Nothing, Walter Kempowski
All for Nothing, Walter Kempowski
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All for Nothing

Author: Walter Kempowski, Anthea Bell, Jenny Erpenbeck, Susan Bernofsky

Narrator: Grover Gardner

Unabridged: 11 hr 20 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/25/2018

Synopsis

A wealthy family tries—and fails—to seal themselves off from the chaos of post–World War II life surrounding them in this stunning novel by one of Germany’s most important postwar writers.In East Prussia, January 1945, the German forces are in retreat and the Red Army is approaching. The von Globig family’s manor house, the Georgenhof, is falling into disrepair. Auntie runs the estate as best she can since Eberhard von Globig, a special officer in the German army, went to war, leaving behind his beautiful but vague wife, Katharina, and her bookish twelve-year-old son, Peter. As the road fills with Germans fleeing the occupied territories, the Georgenhof begins to receive strange visitors—a Nazi violinist, a dissident painter, a Baltic baron, even a Jewish refugee. Yet in the main, life continues as banal, wondrous, and complicit as ever for the family, until their caution, their hedged bets, and their denial are answered by the wholly expected events they haven’t allowed themselves to imagine.All for Nothing, published in 2006, was the last novel by Walter Kempowski, one of postwar Germany’s most acclaimed and popular writers.

About Walter Kempowski

Walter Kempowski (1929–2007) was born in Hamburg, Germany. During World War II, he was made to serve in a penalty unit of the Hitler Youth due to his association with the rebellious movement of jazz lovers. After the war, he settled in West Germany, but during a 1948 visit to East Germany, he was arrested and served eight years at the notorious “Yellow Misery” prison in Bautzen. His first success as an author was an autobiographical novel, Tadellöser & Wolff.

About Anthea Bell

Anthea Bell is the recipient of the Schlegel Tieck Prize for translation from German, the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, the Helen and Kurt Wolff Prize in 2002 for the translation of W. G. Sebald’s Austerlitz, and the 2003 Austrian State Prize for Literary Translation.

About Susan Bernofsky

Susan Bernofsky is associate professor of writing at Columbia University School of the Arts and director of the literary translation program in Columbia's MFA Writing Program. She has translated over twenty books.

About Grover Gardner

Grover Gardner is an award-winning narrator with over a thousand titles to his credit. Named one of the “Best Voices of the Century” and a Golden Voice by AudioFile magazine, he has won three prestigious Audie Awards, was chosen Narrator of the Year for 2005 by Publishers Weekly, and has earned more than thirty Earphones Awards.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Ilse on September 13, 2021

All for Nothing Inside your pretending Crimes have been swept aside Somewhere where they can forget Divine upper reaches Still holding on This ocean will not be grasped All for nothing Did you really want Did you really want Did you really want Did you really want Refuse to surrender Strung out until ripped apar......more

Goodreads review by Michael on January 12, 2020

Walter Kempowski's All for Nothing is a breathtaking book about life inside Nazi Germany (and more specifically in current day Poland which the Nazis had annexed in 1939). I found it even more moving than the far less poetic (if far more Hollywoodian) The Book Thief, more factual than The Tattooist......more

Goodreads review by Dax on September 17, 2018

Deep and complex even with its understated delivery. I imagine a lot of readers felt this style diminished the novels impact, however the story was actually more impactful because of this approach: it illustrated how war minimalizes an individuals significance. Kempowski spends 2/3rds of the book bu......more

Goodreads review by Lee on April 25, 2020

Slow, steady, episodic, fantastic characterization, deep POV shorthand at times, summarized scenes shaded by a paragraph's primary character's psychology, never ostentatious but always attentive language, no storytelling tricks other than fluid perspective shifting among characters, no insight zinge......more

Goodreads review by Maciek on August 25, 2019

Walter Kempowski is a German author best known for his historical novels and a ten volume series Das Echolot (The Sonar), for which he assembled letters, journals and memories of witnesses of World War 2. Of all the volumes only one has been translated from German - the last one, Swansong 1945: A Co......more

Quotes

“What an amazing book this is…Kempowski recounts this grave story almost in a spirit of lightness, with a slightly ironic distance and a quiet, steady humor…The result is a book at once searing and utterly unsentimental.” New Yorker

“His perspective on a grim slice of history steadily broadens out to become visionary.” Economist (London)

“Until recently, the plight of the nearly 750,000 Germans who fled East Prussia in the last days of World War II remained a taboo subject in fiction.” New York Times Book Review

“Beautiful…Reaches its last devastating line with poetic sensibility and the grace of a classical tragedy.” Guardian (London)

“Far more than a great German novel; Kempowski’s late masterwork is a universal tract which suggests that history can only present the facts; it is crafted stories such as this which enable us to grasp a sense of the vicious reality of war.” Irish Times (Dublin)

“Gothic and haunting, the novel asks what things will be like ‘if things turn out bad,’ knowing the answer will come too soon.” Publishers Weekly

“What astonishes throughout is the clearly delivered sense of how the von Globigs cling to the past and refuse to face what’s coming. Who will survive, and, as the title suggests, what’s the point?” Library Journal

“Memorable and monumental: a book to read alongside rival and compatriot Günter Grass’ Tin Drum as a portrait of decline and fall.” Kirkus Reviews

Awards

  • New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice
  • New Yorker Magazine Pick
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