The Dark Room

In an effective, understated way, action becomes meaning in Rachel Seiffert's three-piece novel of ordinary Germans dealing with war. In the first two parts, especially, there is little explication. The characters — a German, born in 1921, with a physical defect who becomes a photographer; and an adolescent on the run in 1945 with her siblings — simply go from here to there and do this and that, witnesses to a Germany either heading into war or in ruins afterwards. The third section, set in the late 1990s, more traditionally addresses issues of guilt and responsibility, with the characters making plain in words the trauma caused in a family when the past is unearthed.