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A True Story of Murders, Bombings, and a Far-Right Campaign to Rid Germany of Immigrants
by Jacob Kushner
From a journalist and foreign correspondent, the harrowing history of how an economic crisis and far-right extremists catalyzed a shocking resurgence of violence in 21st-century Germany.
Not long after the Berlin Wall fell, three teenagers became friends in the East German town of Jena. It was a time of excitement, but also of economic crisis: some four million East Germans found themselves out of jobs. The friends began attending far-right rallies with people who called themselves National Socialists: Nazis. Like the Hitler-led Nazis before them, they blamed minorities for their ills. From 2000 to 2011, they embarked on the most horrific string of white nationalist killings since the Holocaust. Their target: immigrants.
Look Away follows Beate Zschäpe and her two accomplices—and sometimes lovers—as they radicalized within Germany's far-right scene, escaped into hiding, and carried out their terrorist spree. Unable to believe that the brutal killings and bombings were being carried out by white Germans, police blamed—and sometimes framed—the immigrants instead. Readers meet Gamze Kubaşık, whose family emigrated from Turkey to seek safety, only to find themselves in the terrorists' sights. It also tracks Katharina König, an Antifa punk who would help expose the NSU and their accomplices to the world. A masterwork of reporting and storytelling, Look Away reveals how a group of young Germans carried out a shocking spree of white supremacist violence, and how a nation and its government ignored them until it was too late.
"This staggering account from journalist Kushner connects the dots between Germany's far-right movement and a string of terror attacks from 2001 to 2010...Readers will be shocked and dismayed." ―Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A perceptive and engrossing examination of a horrifying chapter in Germany's recent history." ―Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Look Away is a terrifying trip into the dark heart of a post-Cold War Germany in which hope dissolved into unresolved anger… A gripping true crime story with deep historic undertones." ―Booklist
"This fascinating book tells two stories: first, how a gang of East German thugs turned neo-Nazi 'bomb tinkerers' grew into a network of domestic terrorists, and second, how German authorities let them get away with murder. Jacob Kushner tells the story with cautious condemnation and intimate detail." ―Michael Scott Moore, author of The Desert and the Sea
"Jacob Kushner delivers a harrowing account of right-wing radicalization and violence in modern Germany. This expertly reported story of three friends who committed unspeakable hate crimes is a cautionary tale about ignoring the lessons of history and realities of the present. Kushner reminds us that we can't build a better world without taking a full and accurate stock of the one we have now. Look Away is an urgent book." ―Seyward Darby, author of Sisters in Hate
"With meticulous reporting and an unflinching eye, Jacob Kushner brings to horrific life the story of a white nationalist killing spree in East Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall. With a novelist's skills for drama and scene, Kushner shows the dangers of complacency in the face of gathering violence. Such terrible truths, so deftly told, remind us why we should not—and cannot afford to—look away." ―Kim Cross, New York Times bestselling author of In Light of All Darkness and What Stands in a Storm
This information about Look Away was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Jacob Kushner is a foreign correspondent who writes magazine and other longform articles from Africa, Germany, and the Caribbean. His writing has appeared in dozens of publications, including the New York Times, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Harper's, The Economist, National Geographic, The Atavist, The Nation, Foreign Policy and The Guardian. He is the author of China's Congo Plan, which was favorably reviewed in the New York Review of Books. A Fulbright-Germany scholar and Logan Nonfiction Fellow, he was a finalist for the Livingston Award in International Reporting. He teaches and advises ambitious, young journalists at the Pulitzer Center, the Overseas Press Club, and several universities.
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