Life Goes On

Born in 1909, Keilson (Comedy in a Minor Key), practiced medicine in his native Germany until the Nuremberg laws forced him out, then fled to the Netherlands. Aside from his work as a novelist, he is renowned for his work with traumatized children after the war. His first novel, written at age 23 and only now translated into English, is the largely autobiographical account following the lives of the Seldersen family during the interwar period. Herr and Frau Seldersen have a formerly successful store that is increasingly losing customers as economic conditions in their small town and throughout Germany deteriorate. Their son, Albrecht, is a somewhat impassive but sympathetic observer of his family's decline as well as of the political unrest that shakes the nation in the lead up to the Nazi takeover. The pace is leisurely and at times the action seems to unfold in real time, but it builds to a moving conclusion.