Melanie Lowy

Nemesis Melanie Lowy

Annie Ehrlich, a woman of a certain age, born in Munich is the only Holocaust survivor of her family. She is living contentedly with her husband and writes for various journals. Through her work she has contact with the publisher of Jacob Jabot, revisionist historian and fervent holocaust denier.

A chance meeting with this vile man convinces her that the world must be rid of him and that she must be the one to do it. At the Munich Opera House, during the performance of Gotterdammerung, Jabot falls into her honey trap and invites her home.

A dense phantasmagoria of sexual power play and revenge follows, during which the reader is taken on a journey through the darkest hours of European history as seen through the eyes of one of its hapless victims, through the post war years of rebuilding and rebirth and back into a present that flickers between the real and the imaginary, the desired and the feared.

Nemesis is at turns literary autobiography, wish fulfilment and poignant commentary on the basest human emotions by an author who herself lived through the madness of Nazi Germany.