The novelist’s debut memoir, Children of Radium (Scribner, Apr.), uncovers how his great-grandfather, a Jewish chemist, ended up making weapons for the Nazis.
What inspired you to write this book?
I always knew I had a fascinating family history. As the book describes, it changed when I researched that history. I needed to tell my grandmother’s story when I started the book. I inherited my wedding ring from her, which my mom gave me, and she said, “This ring escaped the Nazis.” It was one of those stories I built up over time. After I started researching, I realized everything I got wrong. The story became complicated and ambiguous; it became about my great-grandfather, a Jewish chemist who worked in Germany and Turkey with chemical weapons.
How did you make use of firsthand accounts?
I read my great-grandfather Siegfried Merzbacher’s memoir. He wrote our family’s history. In 1933, when Hitler came to power, he was raising a Jewish family and made chemical weapons under a Nazi government, and that’s just when he stopped writing. He covers everything except what you want him to. It seemed like an exercise in avoidance. There are 10 pages where he talks about his work, guilt, and regret. My book tries to fill the gaps through fact-checking, confirming, denying, or expanding upon what I found in his memoir.
How did the process of writing this book differ from your other works?
I only wrote fiction before this. Writing novels is hard. I never have found it anything other than a struggle, even though I enjoy it. I spent 20 years of my writing life not knowing what would happen next. This book was interesting because I knew the story existed. There was a sense of reassurance that if I looked hard enough, I’d find out what happened next.
What did it feel like to spend time in the locations where your great-grandfather worked?
It was intense. I felt the most direct and physical connection to my history in Germany and east Turkey. On those trips, I faced the remnants of the chemical weapons work. Once I was there, I couldn’t deny the seriousness of what happened. It was emotional, painful, and incredible that the people I met were as gracious and welcoming as they were.
What do you hope readers will take away from the book?
I hope they read it and see people living with complexity and ambiguity, both in the things they’ve done and the things done to them. It’s a book that revels in the complexity of our lives and the ambiguity in history. There are bad people and good people, sure, but also this huge middle ground populated by people who are neither of those things.
