AustLit

'Manfred Jurgensen, a multiple-award-winning writer, editor, literary critic and translator, was born on the border between Denmark and Germany in 1940, a 'midnight child'. He has always been sensitive to boundaries and what's beyond the borders, emotionally and physically.

He has chosen to reveal his life history - to a very large extent dominated by World War II and its aftermath - in a highly original form. The protagonist and his lifetime experiences are wrapped within a semi-fictional presentation through which he philosophises about the nature of 'coincidence' as a life-force. Set in Switzerland, this imaginative narrative begins just after the author suffers a nervous breakdown while delivering a doctoral seminar at the University of Basle.

In a luxurious sanatorium for mentally disturbed patients called Humanitas, he is asked to write about his life experiences, including his own awareness of the Nazi era and what it meant to be one of 'Hitler's children'; he is regularly interviewed by a Board of distinguished psychiatrists based on these accounts. An involuntary prisoner, he longs to achieve his freedom and be reunited with his wife. ' (Source: Publisher's website)