The book that nearly didn’t get written
Joe Dunthorne’s Holocaust family memoir uncovers some highly uncomfortable truths.
Children of Radium is not the book Joe Dunthorne expected to write. The Welsh author has had a varied literary career that began with Submarine, a coming-of-age novel that was adapted into a beloved feature film by Richard Ayoade. Since then, he has written a novel set in a rural commune, another about marriage and friendship set against the backdrop of the 2011 London riots, as well as a collection of poetry. Now he has turned to non-fiction and produced a Holocaust memoir like no other.
After completing his second novel, Wild Abandon, Dunthorne was pondering what to do next. It was the early 2010s and the author had always felt his grandmother’s life warranted a book. He began to conduct interviews but, he explains, “came with a lot of preconceived ideas about what her life was like and the story I wanted to tell – a Hollywoodised adventure story about my heroic ancestors escaping the Nazis.” He could feel the disapproval of his grandparent and decided to put the project on hold since life, unfortunately, tends not to be directed by Steven Spielberg.
A decade later, the writer tried again and, five years on, the result is Children of Radium. Dunthorne believed he would be telling the stranger-than-fiction story of his great-grandfather, Siegfried Merzbacher, an eccentric scientist who invented radioactive toothpaste in the 1920s. His understanding was that this Jewish refugee returned to Berlin during the Olympics of 1936 and pulled off a heist on his own home. The truth, inevitably, was far knottier and difficult to ascertain even having translated Siegfried’s rambling, elliptical 2,000-page memoir.
As the book progresses, its author is forced to face some uncomfortable truths about his great-grandfather’s work involving chemical weapons. Ethically speaking, can we separate the inventor from the invention? How responsible is a Jewish scientist if his research aids the Nazis to commit the most heinous crimes of the 20th century? And can we, from our privileged 21st century vantage point, make any kind of moral judgements? Children of Radium poses the most profound questions about family and legacy without ever feeling didactic. The author admits he would almost certainly have never begun writing the book if he realised the full extent of what he would discover.
Growing up, Dunthorne knew his grandmother was Jewish but lapsed to the extent that she was not practising, in a religious or cultural sense. He explains: “What’s been interesting for me is that even though I don’t consider myself Jewish, writing the book has turned it from something I know about my family history to a real, tangible, emotional connection. I feel much more connected to that side of my family now.”
Like Jesse Eisenberg’s A Real Pain, the subject matter is serious but the tone veers towards irreverence. It is a gamble that, in both instances, pays off, but it was not something Dunthorne did without due consideration. He wondered: “How am I allowed to tell this story in this way? Where is the room for the voice I usually write in?” He did not wish to diminish that period of history but wanted to stay present and true to himself within the text.
It was far from fun and games, however, and the experience of writing the book was “very painful and traumatic at times”. This was an unusual experience for a man who takes pride in his ability to compartmentalise, an inherited family trait. They are, he says, “unemotional people who don’t speak about feelings but make jokes instead”. As the research developed, it became abundantly clear that some of the findings were no laughing matter.
In May, the BBC will air Half-Life, an eight-part podcast version of the story presented by the author and including interviews with Dunthorne’s family members. It has been a remarkable journey given he originally assumed he would just be telling the story as set out in his great-grandfather’s memoir. Instead, he ended up travelling the world and uncovering darker truths. He now views that memoir as an “ego document”, a term he learned from historians that warns against viewing such sources as reliable. His research expanded in every sense and the result is a nuanced examination of family secrets and the tales we tell. Siegfried’s sister, Elisabeth, emerges as a fascinating contrast in the book’s latter stages as Dunthorne’s mother wonders whether her son has chosen to write about the wrong sibling.
Children of Radium is anything but an “ego document”. Dunthorne remains empathetic throughout and manages to reserve judgement even in the face of horrifying evidence. There is no rush to condemn and the butt of the joke tends to be the author, displaying the kind of self-deprecating streak that has been a mainstay of Jewish comedy stretching back centuries. The past may be unreliable but, out of it, Dunthorne has fashioned something truly unique. It might have been a decade and a half since he first tried to tell this story and approaching a century since these events occurred but the writer has produced something that is undeniably worth the wait.
Children of Radium is published by Hamish Hamilton, approx £15 (hardcover)
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