This was a very interesting novel. Well written and atmospheric it was based on true events.
Many thanks to Grove Atlantic and to NetGalley for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion.

This short, well written story illuminates the ends to which one can go for family. To betray not only your countrymen, but in this case, your race, takes a great deal of courage- as treacherous as it is. Since this novel is based on fact and, like me, I suppose some readers will research on, one has to be careful to contain the review within the parameters of the fictional representation.

Stella by Takis Würger, translated in English by Liesl Schillinger. The story of Friedrich (a fictional character), through his childhood and his travel to Germany in WWII. Based in part on a real historical character, a love story, torture, betrayal, and the horrors of war times.

"Falling is something you can only do alone".

Friedrich was born in 1922 in a villa on the outskirts of Choulex, near Geneva, Switzerland. His father was traveling most of the time, and his mother would drink so much that she would lie down on the dining room floor. After he was hurt, had lost the ability to see colors.

"The paint pots gave off different smells. The paints were made of natural pigments. Indigo blue smelled of the butterfly blossoms in our washhouse; Naples yellow of lead; cadmium red of clayey earth in summer; black of coal; white of chalk".

He reached Berlin in January 1942 with dreams of becoming an artist. That was a time when Adolf Eichmann listed methods for the extermination of the Jews of Europe. The story is about the year when Friedrich lived in Berlin. Very interesting that at the beginning of each chapter (month) mentioned world and German events.
Fritz saw Kristin/Stella (a real historical character), a blond model, at his first drawing class. Also, He met Tristan von Appen (a fictional character), a rich young man who did nothing but just living. Both of his new acquaintances have kept secrets from Friedrich.

“Show me how a man treats animals, and I’ll tell you if his heart is in the right place,”

Soon, Friedrich realized that Stella can control the situation in her own way. She had been under the power of the Gestapo for so long. When he looked back understood how blind he was.

"I don’t know if it’s wrong to betray one human being to save another. I don’t know if it’s right to betray one human being to save another".

I really enjoyed this. I'm afraid to say more because of spoilers. It was a sad, heartbreaking novel from a different point of view and another kind of hurt that war cause to people. Well written, and very various from other WWII stories I've read. Highly recommended to the fan of war stories.

Many thanks to Grove Atlantic and NetGalley for giving me the chance to read Stella by Takis Würger in exchange for an honest review.

This novel, translated from German, is based on a true story set in World War II–era in Berlin about a young woman who was an informant for the Gestapo during the war.

A young man from Switzerland, Friedrich, travels to Berlin to see if the stories and rumours of the war are true. He falls in a love with a young woman, who is hiding her Jewish identity, yet she often leaves in the night and he wonders where she goes. When Friedrich finds out what she is doing and where she goes, he is torn between is love for her and his moral code.

The story is told in first person from Friedrich but it is often broken up with miscellaneous world news, which is to give the reader some context of what else is going on in the world during the war, as well as sections that involve trial records. At first I was a bit confused by why they were in the novel but they are relevant in some parts of the novel.

This one is a bit hard to rate in my opinion. Some parts I didn't quite understand or felt they were oddly written, yet I don't know if that's due to it being a translation. I also think the story about Stella Goldschlag was incredibly interesting and I wish we were immersed in her character a bit more instead of through the eyes of Friedrich. Overall though, it was a quick read and full of history, which I always love!

Thanks to Takis Wurger, Grove Atlantic and NetGalley for allowing me to read a copy of the book in return for an honest review. This novel is set to release on March 9, 2021.

Based on a true story, <i>Stella</i> is and about a woman who helps Gestapo identify Jews in WW2 Nazi Germany. It is heartbreaking at parts, terrifying at many and the protagonist finds himself falling in love with a complicated woman. A Swiss man touring Berlin - Germany, he wants to see the war for himself and "experience" Berlin, borrow some German courage - as he tells his father.
Their love story is constricted and claustrophobic.

<i>Thank you Grove Press and Net Galley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.</i>

After having read several World War II novels by American and British women, I received an advance reader copy of Stella, a controversial 2019 German novel now translated into English and scheduled for release in early 2021. Written by Takis Würger, a young reporter for Germany’s news magazine Der Spiegel, Stella is a fictional look at a little-known fragment of WWII history that has led some German readers and critics to condemn the novel as pro-Nazi.

To do so, seems tantamount to condemning Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman as a racist portrayal of To Kill a Mockingbird’s beloved Atticus Finch. Readers too often see what they want to see, often because they fail to look beyond an unreliable narrator’s viewpoint.

Würger tells the story of Friedrich, a young man born in 1922 in a rural area outside Geneva, Switzerland, to a luxury-loving, travelling Swiss father in the import business and a lonely, alcoholic German mother, determined that her son become the great artist she failed to become despite an injury that had left Friedrich color blind.
Feeling invisible at home, twenty-year-old Friedrich determined to leave rural Switzerland for Berlin, arriving the day after New Year’s, 1942, ostensibly to study art although another motive surfaces late in the novel.

Awestruck by the blond nude model in his first life-drawing session, Friedrich’s fate is sealed as he determines to get to locate her in Berlin. He finds not only the blond girl, Kristin, who introduces him to jazz clubs where he also meets Tristan, a young, wealthy German who can find any type of delicacy despite strict war-time rationing. Although initially careful with his own money, infatuated Friedrich caters to Kristin’s every whim. Soon she has moved it, but she mysteriously vanishes during the day.

Over the next few months, Friedrich’s eyes gradually open to war-time Berlin behind the jazz club scene and the lifestyle he offers Kristin. Both Tristan and Kristin have kept secrets from Friedrich, who must search his soul to decide if he can live with what he learns about his friend and the beautiful young blond he loves.

Dividing his novel into chapters based on the months from January through December 1942, Takis Würger tells Friedrich’s story in the first person, interrupting it regularly with lists of news items from the outside world and with italicized historic records from a 1946 war crimes trial conducted by the Soviets in occupied Berlin. The brief news items not only provide Nazi context to the Swiss outsider’s naïve viewpoint, but also include miscellaneous world news such as the discovery of King Tut’s tomb, the birth of Cassius Clay, and the release of Disney’s new film, Bambi. Although these inserted sections, especially the trial records, may seem irrelevant to Würger’s plot, do not skip them. They are highly relevant. In fact, I found myself rereading the trial records after finishing his epilogue.

Whether or not the German language edition included the opening dedication in the English edition, I do not know. It should eliminate any condemnation of the book as pro-Nazi: “For my great-grandfather Willi Waga, who was gassed in 1941 as part of the involuntary euthanasia program Aktion T4.“ Würger’s family history appears to have given him a reason to write about the history many Germans prefer to forget.

My thanks to NetGalley, Grove Atlantic, author Takis Würger, and translator Liesl Schilliger for making it possible for me to review an advance reader copy of this memorable addition to historical fiction..

Poison Girl

This book is very different from other books I have read. I loved the history in the book, the story not as much. In between sections of the story was a section listing Jewish people that had been arrested by the Gestapo upon being pointed out by a Jew Catcher. A person working for the Nazi's (usually a Jewish person) denouncing Jewish people in return for their life and often other concessions.

Freidrich a young man from Switzerland travels to Berlin to find out if the rumors he has heard about the Nazi's are true. He meets a young Cabaret singer named Kristin and falls in love with her. He does not understand her and where she goes every day. He questions her loyalties and wonders if she is pro or anti Nazi. He never finds out the truth until toward the end of the book although there are plenty of clues. He is portrayed at a rather naive young man. Even after she tells him her name is Stella and she is Jewish he believes in her and does not connect her activity with the disappearing Jewish people.

Finally he realizes what she is and has become. He still loves her but cannot condone her actions and her affiliation with the Nazi's.

I really enjoyed the historical events part of the book and would recommend it for that reason. I had really never read anything about the "Jew Catchers" before so this was very different.

Thanks to Takis Wurger, Grove Atlantic and NetGalley for allowing me to read a copy of the book in return for an honest review.

I read a lot of WW2-era fiction and non-fiction, particularly about Nazi Germany and the war in Europe. I learned a long time ago that the term “U-Boat” has two meanings. Of course there is the German submarine. The other is slang for those 5,000-7,000 Jews who “submerged” into hiding in Berlin during WW2. About 1,700 were successful, surviving until the end of the war.

U-Boats were always scrambling to survive, often without fixed addresses, jobs, or ration cards, and usually without even fake identity papers. Those who had an “Aryan” appearance often couldn’t resist being out in public, trying to live as Aryans. If they were caught, the Gestapo transported U-Boats to the camps or into forced labor. But if they caught an Aryan-appearing U-Boat, they might use that person to help them catch others. Such was the case with Stella Goldschlag, a pretty blonde young woman, who was coerced, by threat to her parents, into acting as a catcher. I first read about her in a biography by her former schoolmate, Peter Wyden.

Takis Würger (author of the previous novel, The Club, which I recommend), fictionalizes Stella’s story here. At first, it doesn’t seem to be about Stella at all. The story is told from the point of view of Friedrich, an introverted young man from a wealthy family in Geneva, Switzerland. He decides, against his parents’ advice, to go to Berlin in 1942, ostensibly to study painting. But he is curious about all the contradictory stories he hears about the city.

Friedrich soon meets and falls in love with Kristin, an artist’s model, and is befriended by Tristan von Appell, a rich young man living the high life. But neither Kristin nor Tristan turns out to be what each first appeared. Kristin is the name on Stella Goldschlag’s fake identity papers. Tristan is an SS officer who uses Stella for his own purposes.

Interspersed with Friedrich’s story of the months he spends in Berlin are excerpts from the court transcript from Stella’s actual 1946 trial for her actions as a catcher, as well as short descriptions of the real-life things that happened each month, from the birth of Paul McCartney to war events to a recitation of Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels’s 10 commandments for National Socialists.

World War II and Holocaust-related fiction seem to have become more popular than ever in recent years. I read some of it, but too many books are, to me, simplistic and exploitative, an attempt to dress up a conventional story by using the horrors of the period for sensationalism. Characters are often stock heroes, villains, and victims. Takis Würger does something different here. He shows the complex stew of identity confusion, yearning to belong, self-preservation, and fear that drives the characters. Not one of them is admirable, but each is recognizable.

As I read this title I got rally high expectations of this book and unfortunately these were only almost met. For the most part I enjoyed the book and the characters, it was easy to remember and distinguish them from each other (not just because of their genders). My favorite part was actually after the story where I was able to read about the real life characters. But as good as I was the middle part was too long and boring for me, I felt like there where parts that dragedon for too long like the boxer part for example.

A well researched novelisation of a true story about a love affair in Berlin at the height of the second world war. From a love story, this moves into very different territory as the young woman turns out to be somewhat different than what she seems.

This is exactly what one is looking to read when historical fiction comes to mind. Amazing story that needs to be told . Having said that it is hard to connect with the main character. I'm not sure if it's because something gets lost in translation or if the writing is just weak. Alot seems to be fragmented. Perhaps hiring another translator or writer to spruce it up a bit would benefit the book. Overall I'm glad I read this book. Stella is a character that is mysterious to both the reader and the main character. I liked how the writer left it up to the reader to decide to like her or not. At first it seemed odd that excerpts were placed at the end of chapters. They seemed unrelated and more like history being thrown at you. Then at the end I felt compelled to go back and reread them. The magnitude of the betrayal hits your face boldly. PS. This would make a beautiful movie. Some of the storytelling was so rich I could imagine it clearly in my mind.

This book is based on a true story of Nazi Germany, which generally grabs me. It was dedicated to the author's great-grandfather who was killed in the camps in 1941. In this book, which juxtaposes romance and terror as the protagonist - a naïve young man from Switzerland is at first seduced by Berlin and the beautiful model he meets at his art class. But his story turns very dark as he encounters government-driven hatred, violence and genocide, then finds out that the model he loves is actually a Jew precariously hiding in plain sight as an Aryan. . .

The characters were hard to connect with. But Stella is a poignant portrayal of the personal impact of the power of unchecked hatred and privilege. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for allowing me an advance copy to read. All opinions expressed here are my own,

This is an achingly sad book based on real events in Nazi Germany.. The juxtaposition of romance and terror adds to the poignancy. It conveys the raffishness of Berlin's artistic scene against a backdrop of hatred, violence and the banality of evil. An accomplished book dedicated to the author's great-grandfather who was gassed in 1941.

A story told with a weak dialogue and plot. Not a good read. I was not wanting to finish this book but did, so I could leave some sort of review.