Release: 23.03.2021

Sample Translations

PROPAGANDA

Sample Translations

  • English sample translation is available!
  • His previous novel Risk (Klett Cotta) spent months on the SPIEGEL bestseller list and was nominated for the German Book Prize.
  • “I enjoyed Steffen Kopetzky’s PROPAGANDA a great deal. It’s a fast-paced and exciting novel about World War II and the 1970s, and a tale about how a young idealist becomes a jaded agent of psychological warfare and propaganda. And the novel offers the added layer of a highly lauded German writer examining the American psyche and character.” - Viet Thanh Nguyen (winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and author of The Sympathizer)

It’s 1944 and John Glueck is at war, deep inside Germany in the gloomy Hürtgen Forest. It seems only a few days ago that he was a student in New York, full of love for the German culture of his ancestors. Then he was inducted into Sykewar, the US Army’s propaganda unit. In France, he meets his idol Ernest Hemingway, on whose orders he goes to Hürtgen Forest, a seemingly unimportant area nevertheless bitterly defended by the Wehrmacht. He discovers a secret in the forest just as one of the biggest catastrophes of the war begins. The Battle of Hürtgen Forest ultimately claims over 15,000 lives. What can save John Glueck? His friend Van, a Senecan Native American with deep knowledge of woodlands? His broken German? A miracle?

No one who went into the “Forest of Blood” came out unchanged. The ignorance of the generals was a warning sign for future wars. Twenty years later in Vietnam, John Glueck discovers that politicians are as cynical and dishonest as ever. He is determined to make a difference and embarks on a path that leads from the terrible forest battles of World War II directly to the Pentagon Papers.

Steffen Kopetzky’s major new novel constructs a spellbinding narrative arc linking World War II with Vietnam, creating an intensely gripping story of war, lies and a man who leaves false truths behind.

 

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Italy - Einaudi

  • Publisher: Rowohlt Taschenbuch
  • Release: 23.03.2021
  • 496 pages
  • ISBN: 978-3-499-27647-7
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Propaganda

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Jana Mai

Steffen Kopetzky

Steffen Kopetzky, born in 1971, is the author of novels, stories, radio plays and theatre plays. His novel Risiko (2015) was on the Spiegel bestseller list for months and was nominated for the German Book Prize, while Propaganda (2019) was nominated for the Bavarian Book Prize. From 2002 to 2008, Kopetzky was the artistic director of the Theatre Biennale Bonn. He lives in his hometown Pfaffenhofen an der Ilm with his family.