The Bitter Taste of Victory

Lara Feigel's work of WWII history and literary criticism, The Love-Charm of Bombs, made my personal Top 10 books of 2015. Her latest, The Bitter Taste of Victory, has done it again—but a little bit differently. Her first book was tightly focused on five British novelists and their experiences of the heightened present-tenseness of the Blitz. Her new one is set in postwar Germany with a varied cast of German, British, and American artists, writers, actors, and film directors. Instead of the terrifying and exhilarating Now of war, they are confronting the morally and politically complex Before and After: concentration camps, massive bomb damage, the Nuremberg trials, defeated Germans, the Cold War. In both, Feigel writes in a clear, engaging style that conveys her own knowledge and insight. But she also has the rare talent for gleaning evocative quotes: she knows how to let her subjects explain the history they were actually living. (The artists she writes about were also the celebrities of their era and Feigel has a great eye for steamy gossip items too!)