Children of Radium (Paperback)

Joe Dunthorne

ISBN 10: 0241517478 / ISBN 13: 9780241517475

Published by Penguin Books Ltd, London, 2026

About this Item

Paperback. Wry, off-beat and subversive - a Jewish family memoir like no other, from the author of the cult classic novel SubmarineJoe Dunthorne had always wanted to write about his great-grandfather, Siegfried- an eccentric scientist who invented radioactive toothpaste and a Jewish refugee from the Nazis who returned to Germany under cover of the Berlin Olympics to pull off a heist on his own home.The only problem was that Siegfried had already written the book of his life - an unpublished, two-thousand page memoir so dry and rambling that none of his living descendants had managed to read it. And, as it turned out when Joe finally read the manuscript himself, it told a very different story from the one he thought he knew.Thus begins a mystery which stretches across the twentieth century and around the world, from Berlin to Ankara, New York, Glasgow and eventually London - a mystery about the production of something much more sinister than toothpaste. On the trail of one 'jolly grandpa' with a patchy psychiatric history and an encyclopaedic knowledge of poison gases, Joe Dunthorne is forced to confront the uncomfortable questions that lie at the heart of every family. Can we ever understand where we come from? Is every family in the end a work of fiction? And even if the truth can be found - will we be able to live with it?Children of Radium is a remarkable, searching meditation on individual and collective inheritance. Witty and wry, deeply humane and endlessly surprising, it considers the long half-life of trauma, the weight of guilt and the ever-evasive nature of the truth. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Seller Inventory # 9780241517475

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Children of Radium (Paperback)
• Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd, London
• Publication Date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0241517478
• ISBN 13: 9780241517475
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: new

About this title

Synopsis

A gripping journey into the twisting moral maze of the twentieth century – a journey to uncover a radioactive family secret

'The best book I’ve read in the past year . . . A masterpiece' Financial Times

Joe Dunthorne never met his great-grandfather Siegfried: an eccentric Jewish scientist who escaped Nazi Berlin in the 1930s and snuck back under cover of night to rescue the family heirlooms. Decades later, Siegfried wrote about his adventures in a memoir so long and rambling that almost no one ever managed to read it. Decades after that, his great-grandson Joe unearthed the dusty manuscript and got a nasty surprise. Because hidden on page 1,692 of the unreadable memoir was a shocking confession . . .

‘A voyage into the heart of twentieth-century darkness [...] narrated with the twists and turns of a detective story’ Observer

SHORTLISTED FOR WALES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2026

About the Author

Joe Dunthorne was born and brought up in Swansea. He is the author of three novels and one collection of poetry, including Submarine, which has been translated into fifteen languages and made into an acclaimed film directed by Richard Ayoade, and Wild Abandon, which won the 2012 Encore Award. Children of Radium is his first work of non-fiction. He lives in London.

www.joedunthorne.com