Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald

This is on the New York Times list of the best books of the 21st century--to date. There is an almost strange aloofness to the writing in this succinct book that softens the blow of its message, and I think it should be amongst the first books you recommend to someone who wants to better understand the long term nuanced impact of what the Nazi's achieved in WWII before they were stopped. I wish I felt that it would never happen again, but in this day and age that seems very foolish indeed. The hero/ anti-hero was born in Prague, the son of a moderately successful opera singer and the manager of a small slipper-making factory who was also active in left-wing politics. The rise of the Nazi party in Germany and the subsequent German invasion of Czechoslovakia meant that his father had to flee to Paris, never to be seen or heard from again, his letters to his family confiscated by the German authorities. His mother managed to arrange for her son to be sent on a Kindertransport to London. He was adopted by a Nonconformist preacher and his wife, in North Wales. He had an ordinary enough life, but one without much in the way of joy, and then at some point he starts to remember what it was that happened to he and his family. I was in Terezin years ago, and it was horrifying to me to see what was wrought by the Nazis there and throughout Poland. This book brings a bit of that home.