Winnie and Wolf: A Novel - Hardcover

Wilson, A. N.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0374290962 ISBN 13: 9780374290962

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008

Synopsis

Winnie and Wolf is the story of the remarkable relationship between Winifred Wagner and Adolf Hitler that took place during the years between the two world wars, as seen through the eyes of the secretary at the Wagner House in Bayreuth.

 

Winifred, an English girl, was brought up in an orphanage and married at the age of eighteen to the son of Germany’s most controversial genius. She is a passionate Germanophile, a Wagnerian dreamer, and a Teutonic patriot. In the debacle of the post-Versailles world, the Wagner family hopes for the coming of a Parsifal, a mystic idealist and redeemer. In 1923, they meet their Parsifal—a wild-eyed Viennese opera fanatic named Adolf Hitler. He has already made a name for himself in some sections of German society through rabble-rousing and street-corner speeches. It is Winifred, though, who truly believes in him. Both have known the humiliation of poverty and a deep anger at the society that excluded them. They find in each other an unusual kinship that begins with a passion for opera.

 

In A. N. Wilson’s boldest and most ambitious novel yet, the world of the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany is brilliantly recreated, and forms the backdrop to this incredible bond, which ultimately reveals the remarkable capacity of human beings to deceive themselves.

About this title

From the Back Cover

‘An extraordinary work whose achievements are almost Wagnerian in scale’ Daily Mail

Winnie and Wolf is the story of the extraordinary relationship between Winifred Wagner and Adolf Hitler, as seen through the eyes of the secretary at the Wagner house in Bayreuth.

Winifred, an English girl who married the son of Germany’s most controversial genius at the age of just eighteen, is a passionate Germanophile, a Wagnerian dreamer, a Teutonic patriot.

She and the Wagner family hope, in the debacle of the post-Versailles world, for the coming, not of a warrior, a fearless Siegfried, but of a Parsifal, a mystic idealist, a redeemer-figure. In 1923, they think they have found him: a wild-eyed Viennese opera-fanatic in a trilby hat, a mac and a badly fitting suit.

Hitler has already made a name for himself in some sections of German society through rabble-rousing and street corner speeches. It is Winifred, though, who believes she can really see his poetry. Almost at once they drop formalities and call one another ‘Du’ rather than ‘Sie’. She is Winnie and he is Wolf.

Like Winnie, Hitler is an outsider. Like her, he is haunted by the impossibility of reconciling the pursuit of love and the pursuit of power, and the inevitability, if you seek power, of destruction. Both have known the humiliations of poverty. Both have felt angry and excluded by society. In each other, they find an unusual kinship that expresses itself through a love of opera.

In A. N. Wilson’s most ambitious novel yet, the world of the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany is brilliantly recreated, and forms the backdrop to this incredible bond, which ultimately reveals the remarkable capacity of human beings to deceive themselves.

‘Grippingly imaginative’ Observer

‘A bold, ambitious piece of fiction’ Guardian

‘Deeply clever and gripping... Vividly presented and immaculately researched’ Spectator

About the Author

A.N. Wilson is an award-winning biographer and a celebrated novelist. He lives in North London.

About this edition

• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0374290962
• ISBN 13: 9780374290962
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 368