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Richard's Feet
In the bitter spring of 1948, an Englishman walks across Soviet Germany, against a tide of refugees, searching for the woman he fell in love with before the war…
He will become a lord of the underworld in a country rising from the ashes, where confidence is fast becoming a national trick, and where no one is who they claim to be.
For Richard Thurgo, a man eager to reinvent himself, it is heaven on earth.
Richard is presumed to be dead and buried.
But to be exact, a pair of feet are dead and buried - they alone remained intact, beneath the wreckage of a crashed and burnt-out jeep.
Richard is alive and ready to embrace a new identity.
Faking his own death, Richard adopts a new name and career on the Reeperbahn, Hamburg’s busy red-light district.
As Germany prospers in the fifties and sixties so does Richard, now an influential figure in the underworld, but two threats continue to hang over him — his own discarded identity and that of Germany’s.
Set in England and Germany around the time of the Second World War, Richard’s Feet is a magnificent story of intrigue and obsession. It follows the adventures of an unscrupulous Englishman whose formative experiences in the Germany of the thirties, both erotic and political, draw him back there after the war.
Winner of the 1990 UK Society of Writers’ Encore Award and long-listed for the Booker Prize, Richard’s Feet is the first in the The Heart Beneath Quartet.The second and third books are Cley and Egon.
He will become a lord of the underworld in a country rising from the ashes, where confidence is fast becoming a national trick, and where no one is who they claim to be.
For Richard Thurgo, a man eager to reinvent himself, it is heaven on earth.
Richard is presumed to be dead and buried.
But to be exact, a pair of feet are dead and buried - they alone remained intact, beneath the wreckage of a crashed and burnt-out jeep.
Richard is alive and ready to embrace a new identity.
Faking his own death, Richard adopts a new name and career on the Reeperbahn, Hamburg’s busy red-light district.
As Germany prospers in the fifties and sixties so does Richard, now an influential figure in the underworld, but two threats continue to hang over him — his own discarded identity and that of Germany’s.
Set in England and Germany around the time of the Second World War, Richard’s Feet is a magnificent story of intrigue and obsession. It follows the adventures of an unscrupulous Englishman whose formative experiences in the Germany of the thirties, both erotic and political, draw him back there after the war.
Winner of the 1990 UK Society of Writers’ Encore Award and long-listed for the Booker Prize, Richard’s Feet is the first in the The Heart Beneath Quartet.The second and third books are Cley and Egon.
680 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1990
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About the author
Carey Harrison
26 books9 followersCarey Harrison was an English novelist and dramatist.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 23, 2020
Excellent and enthralling read.
A big book that demands your attention. The story follows Richard Thurgo his childhood in Ireland and Cornwall to his later life, living under an assumed identity in post war Hamburg.
Along the way, we follow him from public school, to becoming a solicitor, a RAF officer, Nazi killer, Hamburg gangster and finally, back to 60's Britain.
His journey is an epic study of a life in turmoil and how it impacts on those around him, as he becomes the catalyst that changes lives for ever.
At times it is not an easy read and demands your complete attention, at other times its almost whimsical, but it is always readable and rewards you with a memorable character with a memorable story to tell.
A big book that demands your attention. The story follows Richard Thurgo his childhood in Ireland and Cornwall to his later life, living under an assumed identity in post war Hamburg.
Along the way, we follow him from public school, to becoming a solicitor, a RAF officer, Nazi killer, Hamburg gangster and finally, back to 60's Britain.
His journey is an epic study of a life in turmoil and how it impacts on those around him, as he becomes the catalyst that changes lives for ever.
At times it is not an easy read and demands your complete attention, at other times its almost whimsical, but it is always readable and rewards you with a memorable character with a memorable story to tell.
June 30, 2021
This was a hard slog but I don't like giving up on a book. A history of a British guy born during the First World War who has an affinity with Germany and visits pre-Second World War and then ends up living there after the War. Quite a lot of heavy description which was hard going.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews