Back to Back Julia Franck. Transl. from the German by Anthea Bell

"Like an expert geologist, Franck is digging deep into her family's extraordinary history creating things of beauty from its dark recesses. Diamond-hard and full of glittering prose, Back to Back is a powerful and moving book. I suspect there are more gems to come" (David Annand Sunday Telegraph)

"Intoxicating... A curious fusion of stark realism tempered with quirkily stylistic flights of fancy: the trademark of one of Germany’s finest contemporary novelists" (Malcolm Forbes Literary Review)

"Franck is an outstanding talent of the Germany literary landscape" (Stuttgarter Zeitung)

"Portrays the rise and fall of the state's ideals via the finely observed life of an artist and her children – a Jewish sculptor who survives to flourish, at a cost, in the GDR" (Boyd Tonkin Independent)

"A virtuoso creator of poetically charged moods...never before has East Germany been so radically depicted as dead at birth as in the arresting, magical narrative web of Julia Franck" (Literarische Welt)