The Scrapbook

Heather Clark author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Vintage Publishing

Publishing:19th Jun '25

£18.99

This title is due to be published on 19th June, and will be despatched as soon as possible.

The Scrapbook cover

Inspired by a real discovery, this is the story of a life-changing seduction in the long shadow of European history

Harvard, 1996. Anna is about to graduate when she meets Christoph, a German student visiting campus. They only spend a week together – discussing art, ideas and history – but it is long enough for Anna to fall desperately in love. Anna begins to visit Christoph in Germany. As she tries to understand the young, elegant man who fascinates her, he reveals his country to her.

Germany is still reckoning with the Holocaust and its pretty new squares and grand facades belie its recent history and the war’s destruction. Anna wants to believe in Christoph and the future he promises her but as their relationship becomes increasingly unsettling, she must face up to everything she has been unwilling to see, and everything Christoph has chosen to ignore.

'A swiftly-moving, molecularly perceptive, singular portrait of intoxicating young love' Aube Rey Lescure, author of River East, River West

'An elegant, unsettling novel about the burden of history and the illusions of love' Sana Krasikov, author of The Patriots

'An exquisitely observed love affair... Stunningly good'
Julia Boyd, author of A Village in the Third Reich

A swiftly-moving, molecularly perceptive, singular portrait of intoxicating young love. Clark captures the psychological nuances and emotional currents of two youthful intellects wrestling with the weight of history and questions of legacy, moral responsibility, and the blinders and dissonance of a complicated romance -- Aube Rey Lescure, author of River East, River West
An elegant, unsettling novel about the burden of history and the illusions of love. With a biographer’s eye for detail and a novelist’s grasp of human frailty, The Scrapbooktraces the fault lines between past and present, between nations and individuals, revealing how history lingers—not in grand narratives, but in intimate entanglements -- Sana Krasikov, author of The Patriots
Through an exquisitely observed love affair, Clark explores how the Nazis’ lingering legacy can still haunt the lives of those born long after the war. A stunningly good novel. -- Julia Boyd, author of A Village in the Third Reich
Heather Clark’s The Scrapbook is a masterpiece. This beautifully crafted, quietly devastating love story reminds us of the epic impact of the Second World War across continents and through generations, its scars perhaps most poignantly felt in the intimate interactions between two solitary people -- Rebecca Donner, author of All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days
Ingeborg Bachmann once asked, “When will the war be over?” Heather Clark’s debut novel, The Scrapbook, offers an answer to this timeless question in a work of searing tenderness. An intimate portrait of youthful romance, haunted by the shadow of the second world war, Clark meticulously captures the melancholy inheritance of a generation trying to find their place amidst the rubble of the past. The initiations of first love, the scars it leaves behind, The Scrapbook reminds us that we’re never as far from history as we’d like to imagine, and it reminds us just how much we must give up in order to move on. Beautifully written, brilliantly researched. A stunning quiet work you won’t be able to put down -- Samantha Rose Hill, author of Hannah Arendt
Historical fiction strikes a complicated balance, between a need to recreate with some accuracy events in the past while at the same time communicating the relevance of those facts to the present. Heather Clark situates a contemporary love story in the shadow of - and with capacious insight into - German history both during and immediately after the Second World War. Clark navigates difficult conceptual ground with remarkable ease, making the complex legacy of the war appreciable to readers in the present -- Matthew Longo
'A first-class biography . . . Each chapter reads with the ease of a novel . . . I couldn't put it down' * The Times, praise for Red Comet *
'Surely the final, the definitive, biography of Sylvia Plath' -- Ali Smith, praise for Red Comet
'One of the most beautiful biographies I've ever read' -- Glennon Doyle, praise for Red Comet

ISBN: 9781787335424

Dimensions: 222mm x 138mm x 40mm

Weight: 500g

256 pages