Echoes - Eva Maria Knabenbauer

The common thread running through all twelve stories of this collection is that they are based on subsidiary characters of Eva's novel 'Silent Shadows'. Mostly, the stories are snapshots of life in the former GDR or they afford glimpses into the re-united Germany, and in this they are unashamedly political. But, above all, each story is about the trials and tribulations of the human condition, and readers will be as intrigued by the characters' challenges as the author was in the writing of it. Despite the characters' previous inclusion in 'Silent Shadows', each of their stories is well able to stand alone. Reading 'Silent Shadows' adds another dimension to the collection. The stories are arranged in such a way that the first five of Block I share the setting of the pre-Berlin Wall days of 1960 & 1961. The first story of Block II comes to an end in 1963, whilst the other four find their conclusions in post-1989 Germany. The two Block III stories take the reader to Kuala Lumpur and the Malay rainforest and to London.