The Scrapbook by Heather Clark

The Scrapbook by Heather Clark

A debut novel about a life-changing romance in the long shadow of European history, inspired by the author's real discovery.

'A singular portrait of intoxicating young love' AUBE REY LESCURE

'You wouldn't be able to put it down' SAMANTHA ROSE HILL

For years after I tried to tell myself that what happened between us was hardly worth remembering.

Harvard, 1996. Anna is about to graduate when she meets Christoph, a German student visiting campus. They only spend a week together – discussing art, ideas and history – but it is long enough for Anna to fall desperately in love. Anna begins to visit Christoph in Germany. As she tries to understand the young, elegant man who fascinates her, he reveals his country to her.

Germany is still reckoning with the Holocaust and its pretty new squares and grand facades belie its recent history and the war’s destruction. Christoph condemns his country’s actions but remains vague about the part his own grandparents played. Anna’s grandfather, meanwhile, was an American GI who took photos of the end of the war, photos that capture its horror, preserved in a scrapbook only Anna has seen.

Anna wants to believe in Christoph and the future he promises her but as their relationship becomes increasingly unsettling, she must face up to everything she has been unwilling to see, and everything Christoph has chosen to ignore.

'An elegant, unsettling novel about the burden of history and the illusions of love' Sana Krasikov, author of The Patriots

'Heather Clark writes with a rare empathy' Times Literary Supplement

A swiftly-moving, molecularly perceptive, singular portrait of intoxicating young loveClark captures the psychological nuances and emotional currents of two youthful intellects wrestling with the weight of history and questions of legacy, moral responsibility, and the blinders and dissonance of a complicated romance -- Aube Rey Lescure, author of River East, River West
'A first-class biography . . . Each chapter reads with the ease of a novel . . . I couldn't put it down' * The Times, praise for Red Comet *
'Heather Clark's meticulous research, sweeping up every scrap, deftly integrates drafts, unpublished pieces, stories and critiques of poems...to make this extraordinary story more moving than ever' * Daily Telegraph, praise for Red Comet *
'Heather Clark writes with a rare empathy and understanding of her subject... Red Comet reveals Plath as she ought to be seen' * Times Literary Supplement, praise for Red Comet *
'Surely the final, the definitive, biography of Sylvia Plath' * Guardian, praise for Red Comet *
'One of the most beautiful biographies I've ever read' -- Glennon Doyle, praise for Red Comet

Heather Clark is the author of four works of non-fiction, including Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath (published by Jonathan Cape), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the LA Times Book Prize in Biography, and was the winner of the Slightly Foxed Prize and the Truman Capote Prize (awarded by the Iowa Writers’ Workshop). It was a Book of the Year in the Guardian, Daily Telegraph, Times and New York Times. Her work has appeared in publications including the New York Times, Time, Lit Hub, and TLS. She has recently received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the New York Public Library’s Cullman Centre. The Scrapbook is her debut novel.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781787335424
ISBN 10	1787335429
Title	The Scrapbook
Author	Heather Clark
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Vintage Publishing
Year published	2025-06-19
Number of pages	256
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.