Forty Autumns: A Family’s Story of Courage and Survival on Both Sides of the Berlin Wall

By Nina Willner

Little, Brown, 391 pages, £20

This well-produced memoir is the story of three generations, mainly focusing on the immediate family of her ‘Opa’ ( grandfather in German), a teacher who remained in East Germany as it turned into a Communist state after the war.

Hanna, the writer’s mother, got away to the West but Hanna’s father lured her back. She was successful the second time, evading the border guards while they were busy detaining a less fortunate group of escapees.

Her mother did not even know Hanna later moved to the US and had two children, one of them the writer of this book. Grandma responded to the tightening state control with the concept of the ‘ family wall’ where the parents and seven remaining children could let down their guard at home, but never outside where they had to be unquestioningly loyal to the regime.

Forty Autumns does not aim to be impartial: there was apparently nothing negative about the life Hanna found in the US; while the opposite is true of East Germany, so the book accurately reflects the spirit of the Cold War.