Uwe Timm is one of the most successful contemporary authors in Germany, having published more than twenty books. Six are available in English translation, among them The Invention of Curried Sausage (Die Entdeckung der Currywurst) and In My Brother’s Shadow (Am Beispiel meines Bruders), in which he approached his relationship with his father and brother. Uwe Timm was the youngest son in his family. His brother, sixteen years his senior, was a soldier in the Waffen SS and died in Ukraine in 1943. This autobiographical novel is the point of departure for a conversation with Sabine von Mering, a professor of German and the director of the Center for German and European Studies at Brandeis University, about Germany’s past in the present.
