"How can one understand who he is if he does not know where he comes from?" Nora Krug belongs to the second generation of Germans born after World War II. In her unique literary and graphic "family album," she tries to find an answer to what it means to be German after the Holocaust. A sense of shame towards her own nation has accompanied her since she was young, and so she decided to research her own family history. She embarks on a fascinating journey of exploration, discovery and research, resulting in a book that combines cartoon and handwritten picture stories with historical photographs, documents from archives and flea market finds. The author puts it all together into a new poetic, artistic and literary fascinating whole, in which family history meets contemporary history.


Nora Krug is a German-American author and illustrator whose drawings and visual narratives have appeared in newspapers, magazines and anthologies internationally. Her illustrations have been recognized with gold and silver medals by the Society of Illustrators and the NY Art Directors Club. Krug is a recipient of fellowships from Fulbright, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the Maurice Sendak Foundation, and others. Her books are included in the Library of Congress and the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Columbia University. Krug was named Moira Gemmill Illustrator of the Year and 2019 Book Illustration Prize Winner by the Victoria and Albert Museum. Her visual memoir Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home (Scribner, 2018, foreign edition title Heimat), about WWII and her own German family history, was chosen as a best book of the year by the New York Times, The Guardian, NPR, Kirkus Review, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Boston Globe. It was the winner of the 2018 National Book Critics Circle Award, the Lynd Ward Graphic Novel Prize, the Art Directors Club gold cube and discipline winner cube, the Society of Illustrators silver medal, and the British Book Design and Production Award, among others.