Lathey, Gillian
The Impossible Legacy

Identity and Purpose in Autobiographical Children's Literature Set in the Third Reich and the Second World War.

This comparative study explores purpose and identity in the revision of wartime childhoods by German, Jewish and British writers addressing a child or adolescent audience. Autobiographical accounts published between 1970 and 1995 form part of a general reassessment of the past which was taking place at personal and national levels. In passing their own stories on to the next generation, each writer's selection of content and control of narrative perspective reveal the roles of personal need and changing ideologies in recreating that «small person far away». 258 Seiten, broschiert (Peter Lang Verlag 1999) Mängelexemplar