A tale told over decades and in a different age, The Black Eagle Inn (by Christoph Fischer) is an interesting and difficult to put down look on life to the post World War Two Germany. The book does get off to quite a slow start but if you stick with it, you are rewarded.
The book chronicles the fortunes of a family farm and associated restaurant - The Black Eagle Inn - through the war and the difficult years that followed in a nation struggling to rebuild and come to terms with a new identity. While set in this turbulent period of history, the story focuses more on the wars inside The Black Eagle Inn rather than out. Backstabbing, petit politics and mind games are all waged within the same four walls.
Most of these games are fought between cousins
Markus and Lukas, the former being matriarch Anna’s favourite “son”, who stands
to inherit the most when she dies. But Lukas’s determination to get a bigger
slice of the family estate transforms from silly squabbles between children as
he and Markus grow older.
The book cuts deep inside the minds of all the key
characters. I have read many books that try to throw completely different
characters together that have failed, but The Black Eagle Inn is not among that
tally. The author really gets inside his character’s heads and plays out their
thought processes to the readers, offering a deep understanding of the events
or the emotions that have led them to where they are.
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