glimpse at life for Germans from 1938-1991.

The book posits the following questions: What would I do in similar circumstances? How do I stand up for injustices today? After reading The Women in the Castle, the answers are not as black and white as one might think.

Members have read other novels about Nazi Germany which they felt had insights, like The Lilac Girls, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, and Sarah’s Key. In contrast, members felt The Women in the Castle offered new insights that these other novels did not. In other words, The Women in the Castle covered new ground. Only one member had read a nonfiction book which addressed this period of time in a similar way.The member highly recommended this book, Two Lives: A Memoir byVikram Seth. “Widely acclaimed as one of the world’s greatest living writers, Vikram Seth — author of the international bestseller A Suitable Boy — tells the heartrending true story of a friendship, a marriage, and a century. Weaving together the strands of two extraordinary lives — Shanti Behari Seth, an immigrant from India who came to Berlin to study in the 1930s, and Helga Gerda Caro, the young German Jewish woman he befriended and later married — Two Lives is both a history of a violent era seen through the eyes of two survivors and an intimate, unforgettable portrait of a complex, abiding love.”—from Amazon

Discussion Highlights:

The groups discussed ways they related to the three main characters and discussed which character they identified with the most. Members talked about