An astonishingly good book, which I can already see as one of my books of 2025. Dunthorne's grandmother was a German Jewish survivor of the war, and he starts this family memoir with the idea of writing about her experiences, even though she was always very much less than enthusiastic about the idea. Whilst looking through the archive of paperwork that's been stuffed in a drawer in her old bedroom, he comes across his great-grandfather's memoir, and realises that this might be the story to write...

There is tragedy in this book, but not the kind you might expect. Siegfried, the great-grandfather, was a chemist who was uncomfortably close to the production of poison gases both before the Nazis came to power and during their rise in the 1930s. His escape to Turkey wasn't the clearcut tale that Dunthorne had grown up assuming; the journeys that he makes to follow in the footsteps of a forebear who was conflicted in so many ways is fascinating.

This is a book which manages to balance the darkest happenings with a perfect and razor sharp humour. I kept reading bits aloud to anyone within earshot, and will be recommending it to everyone. There are some gaps: the story of the radium toothpaste doesn't really go anywhere, and I'm not convinced by the title. Also, the ending is somewhat abrupt, almost as if he didn't quite know how to end so just stopped writing. But these are minor quibbles. I really hope it gets into a lot of hands and wins prizes, because it fully deserves all the acclaim that will almost certainly come its way.

I absolutely loved this. Dunthorne tells the story of his great-grandfather, Siegfried, a Jewish chemist who fled the Nazis for Turkey in the Second World War and ended his days in America. Thinking this would be a fairly traditional holocaust memoir, he began to piece together the stories of Siegfried's life only to find something much darker and more complex. Dunthorne takes a tricky story and writes it with grace, humour and a sharp eye that makes this a fresh and fascinating tale. By making himself the butt of the joke with his preconceived ideas about his family, about memoir writing and about the holocaust he allows for a much more nuanced and subtle story that is by turns, shocking, sad, funny and riveting.

Children of Radium is a candid and thought-provoking family history set against the Nazi regime.

Although the book deals with a whole raft of serious themes - scientific ethics, chemical warfare and the Holocaust - and grapples with the central question of morality, Dunthorne unpicks the story of his great-grandfather's life with a wry sense of humour, rendering even the darkest subject matter into a personable and compelling read. This is a book about ambiguity, how one can be both victim and villain, and in many ways Dunthorne's tone underlines rather than undermines the complexity of this focus.

Dunthorne's research takes him on a journey which reveals how the past still bleeds into the present, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not.

Children of Radium by Joe Dunthorne is a thoroughly researched and interesting delve into a fascinating family history.