In the tradition of The Hare with Amber Eyes, this 'profound...comic... and] unconventional' (The New York Times) family memoir investigates the dark legacy of the author's great-grandfather, a talented German-Jewish chemist who wound up developing chemical weapons and gas mask filters for the Nazis. When Joe Dunthorne began researching his family history, he expected to write the account of their harrowing escape from Nazi Germany in 1935. What he found in his great-grandfather Siegfried's voluminous, unpublished, partially translated memoir was a much darker, more complicated story. Siegfried was an eccentric Jewish scientist living in a small town north of Berlin, where he began by developing a radioactive toothpaste before moving on to products with a more sinister military connection--first he made and tested gas-mask filters, and then he was invited to establish a chemical weapons laboratory. By 1933, he was the laboratory's director, helping the Nazis to 'improve' their poisons
