Critics' Opinion:
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Published Apr 2019
384 pages
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publication Information
An intimate portrait of a friendship severed by history, and a sweeping saga of wartime, motherhood, and legacy by an award-winning novelist.
East Village, 1989
Things had never been easy between Ava Fisher and her estranged mother Ilse. Too many questions hovered between them: Who was Ava's father? Where had Ilse been during the war? Why had she left her only child in a German orphanage during the war's final months? But now Ilse's ashes have arrived from Germany, and with them, a trove of unsent letters addressed to someone else unknown to Ava: Renate Bauer, a childhood friend. As her mother's letters unfurl a dark past, Ava spirals deep into the shocking history of a woman she never truly knew.
Berlin, 1933
As the Nazi party tightens its grip on the city, Ilse and Renate find their friendship under siege—and Ilse's increasing involvement in the Hitler Youth movement leaves them on opposing sides of the gathering storm. Then the Nuremburg Laws force Renate to confront a long-buried past, and a catastrophic betrayal is set in motion…
An unflinching exploration of Nazi Germany and its legacy, Wunderland is a at once a powerful portrait of an unspeakable crime history and a page-turning contemplation of womanhood, wartime, and just how far we might go in order to belong.
"Starred Review. Man's inhumanity to man—and the redemptive power of forgiveness—is on stark and effective display in Epstein's gripping novel, a devastating tale bound for bestseller lists." - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. An absorbing exploration of friendship, betrayal, and coming to terms with the past." - Booklist
"Starred Review. A vividly written and stark chronicle of Nazism and its legacies." - Kirkus Reviews
"This is one of those magnificent books that will make you feel everything – love, loss, betrayal, redemption, and how everyday citizens could be swept up in the manic fervor of Nazi Germany. The unintended parallels to today's political climate are haunting. Reading this book is like reading tea leaves, foretelling a future we desperately want to avoid." - Jamie Ford, author of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet and Songs of Willow Frost
"Wunderland is a beautiful and haunting and utterly magnificent novel...a page-turner that kept me reading until two in the morning one night and three in the morning the next. It's that good." - Chris Bohjalian, author of The Flight Attendant
"Wunderland is a sweeping, heart-stopping story...This is an unforgettable portrait of friendship and betrayal, mothers and daughters, the political forces beyond our control and the personal histories we can't shake. A rich, gripping novel." - Ellen Umansky, author of The Fortunate Ones
"Not only an original and searing investigation into the seductive and terrifying world of Hitler's National Socialist movement and its aftermath, but also a suspenseful and profoundly moving story of love, hate, passion and devotion." - Joanna Hershon, author of Swimming
"[T]his novel is more than a history lesson; it's a heart-in-your-mouth page-turner that leaves you thinking about its characters, and imagining how things might have gone for them in a different world, long afterwards." - Hillary Jordan, author of Mudbound
This information about Wunderland 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.
Jennifer Cody Epstein is the author of the international bestseller The Painter from Shanghai, and The Gods of Heavenly Punishment, and winner of the 2013 Asian Pacific Association of Librarians Honor award for outstanding fiction. She has written for The Wall Street Journal, Vogue, Self, Mademoiselle, and many others. She has an MFA in fiction from Columbia University and an MA in international affairs from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two daughters.
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