An account of seven mothers and their first daughters begins in Slovenia in 1880 with murder and suicide and near-asphyxiation of a new-born in the snow. This true story soon shifts to WW1 when the third of the 'seven maids' is still only a child. Eventually she will experience life under British Colonial rule on the Gold Coast (Ghana) and not much later the outbreak of WW2 while living in South Africa. Germans were enemy aliens in Commonwealth countries. Repatriation to Germany revealed the chaos of 1944/45, the SS, a Terror raid, invading Russian troops. There are unusual insights into the...

This 17th century adventure brings to life a turning point in European history: forgotten times, knowledge, and concerns in Northern Europe after the Thirty- years war.

An orphaned German boy, alive in the time of Bach, Handel and the newly founded Royal Society in England, must face facts about his own father's evil deeds. Hoping to overcome 'inherited' guilt, he travels to the newly discovered southern tip of Africa and learns to live in the changing world around him.

Secrecy, adultery, jealousy and guilt play their part in the story of Finuala, a Catholic girl who breaks all the rules.

Played out against the backdrop of Apartheid South Africa, she covers her tracks successfully until her death, when she leaves behind a cache of letters, from which, to the amazement of her family, comes this true story.

A)Female fulfilment, with a bit of luck, and
B)getting all one needs: a story of adultery and jealousy.
C)Breaking the rules but hedging ones bets.
D)Mistakes, and almost getting away with them, then:
E)the reckoning and counting...

In dieser Erzahlung geht es um das Versinken in eine eigene, individuelle Welt. Mutter und Tochter beschreiben in Tagebuchform, wie es sich anfuhlt, wenn Wissen verloren geht, Angst vor Verlust zum taglichen Begleiter wird und der Mensch, der einmal war, verschwindet. Kind und Eltern - die Rollen bleiben im Leben. Doch die Verantwortung fureinander wechselt. Gerade Menschen mit Demenz brauchen Menschen, die fur sie Entscheidungen treffen, mogen sie auch noch so schwer sein. Das Leben mit Demenz trifft nicht nur den dementiell erkrankten Menschen, sondern zieht auch seine Angehorigen in eine...

In dieser Erzahlung geht es um das Versinken in eine eigene, individuelle Welt. Mutter und Tochter beschreiben in Tagebuchform, wie es sich anfuhlt, wenn Wissen verloren geht, Angst vor Verlust zum taglichen Begleiter wird und der Mensch, der einmal war, verschwindet. Kind und Eltern - die Rollen bleiben im Leben. Doch die Verantwortung fureinander wechselt. Gerade Menschen mit Demenz brauchen Menschen, die fur sie Entscheidungen treffen, mogen sie auch noch so schwer sein. Das Leben mit Demenz trifft nicht nur den dementiell erkrankten Menschen, sondern zieht auch seine Angehorigen in eine...

These loosely connected short stories describe fragments of an expatriate German familys life in British colonial Africa and a gradual transition to Britishness. A more-systematic memoir from the viewpoint of my mothers family is contained in the earlier Seven Maids, about seven generations of mothers and their eldest daughters. The current collection begins almost a century ago with my fathers early days as a shipping agent on the Gold Coast (now Ghana), - this books cover is based on one of his own photographs from that time.

A later stage of my life in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) is...