Blueprint

Prasad paints the postwar world with broad, sweeping strokes and painfully accurate details in this accomplished novel. Middle-aged Hannah Muller, living in Berlin, has an ideal Aryan appearance, but she was blacklisted by the Nazis as an open-minded German artist. After Germany is divided among the victors, Hannah grows numb as she’s repeatedly raped by occupying Russians. Her life changes when she’s wooed by Eric Grossman, a young Jewish American who has come to work at the Nuremberg trials. Although “conflict... seemed to pursue her like the Greek Furies wherever she went,” Hannah, desperate for work, finds it creating artistic propaganda for the Russians and then for the Americans, and her painting talents are enhanced by her abilities as a multilingual translator. She attends Nuremberg and other trials with Eric, who has gained permission from the military to work as a lawyer and is seeking information about the Nazis’ plan to conquer Eastern Europe and exterminate the Jews. Eventually, she travels to the U.S. with him; in America, she finds bigotry against Germans and panic about the Red Scare, and she contemplates contradictory ideologies of various nationalities before returning to Germany. Prasad’s novel, tightly written and comprehensive, provides readers with a powerful meditation on the aftermath of the Holocaust. (BookLife)