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Walter Kempowski, best known here for his novel All for Nothing, was one of Germany’s great chroniclers of ordinary lives under the Nazis. An Ordinary Youth, based loosely on his childhood, has been a long time coming. It was published in 1971 in Germany, and this is the first English translation of a novel that follows the young Walter from the outbreak of the Second World War to the fall of Berlin.

Walter is nine years old when the war begins. His world is his school, home, mother and siblings. Nazism is a faint hum in the background. The narrative is told in small, self-contained paragraphs, adding up to a collage of daily life. One nugget could be about a picnic, perhaps, or