The Uncompleted

The expulsion of Germans from the Sudetenland and the Berlin of 2002 – Reinhard Jirgl's new novel links the spectres of the past with the present of a country unable to forgive and forget.

Late summer 1945 in the Sudetenland – the beginning of the so-called "wild expulsions", initiated by the Czech authorities under the pretext that all Germans were Nazis, that eventually led to the flight of the entire German population. Reinhard Jirgl, the great chronicler, tells the story of four women from the small town of Komotau, the last members of a family left after the Second World War: seventy-year-old Johanna, her daughters, Hanna and Maria, and the seventeen-year-old granddaughter Anna. Spanning the time from the exodus that led the refugees from their homes to present-day Berlin, Jirgl's novel is a family saga that covers a delicate chapter of history, the effects of which are still felt today.

"Jirgl is the kind of writer we need." (Die Zeit)