The Lost Book of Bonn is perfect for fans of Kate Quinn’s The Rose Code. It’s a story of bravery and resistance in the face of injustice.
The novel is set in Germany, 1946, with flashbacks to the 1930s and early years of the 1940s. Our protagnoist, Librarian Emily Clarke has just arrived in Bonn. She is there at the request of the U.S. Library of Congress, which is cataloguing and acquiring books plundered by the Nazis. There are divisions in the massive depot where Emily works that are dedicated to determining if personal connections can be identified and returned to surviving family members, others that bring Jewish literature to refugees, and Emmy’s branch which takes key works stolen by high-ranking Nazis and assesses if they can be returned to their rightful owners or are available to be acquired by the Library of Congress and shipped to the U.S.
The background story is about how the Nazis tried to re-write history by stealing and destroying books and art, or by hiding and examining those works as a way to position themselves as superior. The story at the forefront is Emmy’s search to find the owner of a poetry collection by Rainer Maria Rilke that has a beautiful handwritten dedication of love on the title page: “My dearest Annelise, my brave Edelwiess Pirate.” Emmy is keen to find Annelise and her lover Eitan. Interwoven into that story is the love story of Annalise and Eitan. The chapters move between Emmy’s present day (1946) and that of Annalise and her sister Christina (1936 to 1943).
This is a quick read, an intriguing story, and a timely reminder that the consequences of war are felt well beyond the dates of the conflict.
The Lost Book of Bonn by Brianna Labuskes is published by HarperCollins Canada.