Kingdom of Twilight

One night in autumn 1944, a gunshot echoes through the alleyways of a small town in occupied Poland. An SS officer is shot dead by a young Polish Jew, Margarita Ejzenstain. In retaliation, his commander orders the execution of thirty-seven Poles--one for every year of the dead man's life. First hidden by a sympathetic German couple, Margarita must then flee the brutal advance of the Soviet army with her newborn baby.

So begins a thrilling panorama of intermingled destinies and events that reverberate from that single act of defiance. Kingdom of Twilight follows the lives of Jewish refugees and a German family resettled from Bukovina, as well as a former SS officer, chronicling the geographical and psychological dislocation generated by war. A quest for identity and truth takes them from refugee camps to Lübeck, Berlin, Tel Aviv, and New York, as they try to make sense of a changed world, and of their place in it.

Steven Uhly was born in 1964 in Cologne and is of German-Bengali descent, with roots in Spanish culture. He has studied literature, served as the head of an institute in Brazil, and translated poetry and prose from Spanish, Portuguese, and English. He lives in Munich with his family. His book Adams Fuge was awarded the "Tukan Preis" of the city of Munich in 2011. His novel Gluckskind (2012) was filmed as a primetime production by director Michael Verhoeven for ARTE and the 1st German Channel ARD.