Germania: In Wayward Pursuit of the Germans and Their History »

Simon Winder has spent far too much time in Germany, denying himself a lot of sunshine and fresh fruit just to write this book. He is the author of the highly praised The Man Who Saved Britain (FSG, 2006) and works in publishing in London.

A UNIQUE EXPLORATION OF GERMAN CULTURE, FROM SAUSAGE ADVERTISEMENTS TO WAGNER

Sitting on a bench at a communal table in a restaurant in Regensburg, his plate loaded with disturbing amounts of bratwurst and sauerkraut made golden by candlelight shining through a massive glass of beer, Simon Winder was happily swinging his legs when a couple from Rottweil politely but awkwardly asked: “So: why are you here?”

This book is an attempt to answer that question. Why spend time wandering around a country that remains a sort of dead zone for many foreigners, surrounded as it is by a force field of historical, linguistic, climatic, and gastronomic barriers? Winder’s book is propelled by a wish to reclaim the brilliant, chaotic, endlessly varied German civilization that the Nazis buried and ruined, and that, since 1945, so many Germans have worked to rebuild.

Germania is a very funny book on serious topics—how we are misled by history, how we twist history, and how sometimes it is best to know no history at all. It is a book full of curiosities: odd food, castles, mad princes, fairy tales, and horse-mating videos. It is about the limits of language, the meaning of culture, and the pleasure of townscape.

The Barnes & Noble Review

Winder's unexpected follow up to The Man Who Saved Britain is the vastly more ambitious Germania: In Wayward Pursuit of the Germans and Their History, an extravagant bid to do the same idiosyncratic job on an entire country that he did on Bond. Once again, he's going public with a private fascination. Despite having no roots there and being unable to speak or even read the language -- "a tragic flaw," he cheerily concedes, the hyperbole acting to distract us from noticing that it's also a serious practical disadvantage -- he's been bewitched, bothered, and bewildered by Wagner's, Heinrich Heine's, and Frederick the Great's old turf ever since a disastrous but hilarious family vacation first brought him up against its glum but peculiarly gemutlichkeit mysteries in his teens.