Image for Investigation

Image for Investigation: About my Father is Christoph Meckel's celebrated work of memoir or father-biography in the mould of Paul Kersten's Der alltägliche Tod meines Vaters and Ruth Rehmann's Der Mann auf der Kanzel. The book is an act of need, personal and political: an attempt, by the son of a former German officer in the Second World War, to account not merely for his father's actions but for the actions of a generation. His compassion, his dexterity with the knife, his lack of sentiment when sentiment would only slow his hand, his seeing around his subject, his willingness (an artist's) to explore-these traits make Image an uncommon work of its kind. Meckel's language is unsparing, torn from a heart shut tight and wounded by love. This edition revises Stan Jones's original translation, and includes a new introduction by Ben Winch. Ironically, the portrait which is more believable is not that of E. Meckel but of the author himself, who inadvertantly appears in the role of a judgemental, petulant and vindictive son, out to even with his father for the many unjust punishments he had suffered at the latter's hands. - Anest Andrea, World Literature Today A chapter of family history, which is not unique and not purely private but representative and political through-and through. . . . A sensitive officer, who would rather have sat at his writer's desk and yet enjoyed command; a father, who would rather have been the dad-at-play and yet claims the position of head of the family in all circumstances and sees correction as his duty: the images fit together exactly. - Elsbeth Pulve, Schweizerische Monatshefte