Matt Graydon’s debut novel Leaving Fatherland is a haunting and deeply moving work of historical fiction that follows one man’s lifelong quest to understand the source of his childhood trauma against the tumultuous backdrop of Nazi Germany and World War II. Through vivid, emotionally resonant prose, Graydon takes the reader on an intimate journey into the mind and memories of Oskar Bachmann as he desperately seeks to unravel the mystery behind his father’s cruelty. The result is a poignant meditation on identity, family secrets, and the insidious legacy of violence that showcases Graydon’s skill at crafting nuanced, psychologically complex characters.
A Childhood Marred by Violence
We first meet Oskar as a sensitive, bookish boy growing up in 1920s Halbe, where he routinely endures savage beatings at the hands of his mercurial father Karl. From the opening pages, Graydon plunges us into the harsh reality of Oskar’s youth in Nazi-era Germany. The author’s vivid prose brings to life the fear and confusion of a sensitive child grappling with his father’s inexplicable cruelty:
“Eating in front of Papa had always made me nervous. It often made him mad, so mad that he would curse out loud and slap me across the face. Sometimes it seemed he wanted to kill me.”
Oskar’s only respite is the countless hours he spends reading, dreaming of one day becoming a pilot like his WWI veteran father, and studying the emerging field of psychology—partly as a survival mechanism to help anticipate his father’s volatile moods. Graydon does a masterful job conveying the suffocating tension and dread that permeates the Bachmann household, as well as the bewilderment of a child who cannot comprehend why his father seems to reserve his worst rages for him while favoring Oskar’s brother Emil.
Graydon skillfully portrays the suffocating atmosphere of Nazi Germany, where even the simple act of reading becomes an act of rebellion. Oskar finds solace in books, particularly those banned by the regime. His friendship with Timo, another bookish outsider, provides a touching counterpoint to the darkness surrounding them.
The destruction of Timo’s secret library by Nazi zealots is a gut-wrenching scene, symbolizing the broader assault on knowledge and culture:
“I had to stop them. Pushing through the bystanders determined to reach the water, I shouted as loud as I could. ‘No! Stop. Why are you doing this?'”
A Scholar in Search of Answers
As the Nazis rise to power and another war looms on the horizon, Oskar briefly escapes to study psychology in America, enjoying a blissful period of intellectual and personal growth in late 1930s New York. Here he falls under the mentorship of the charismatic Professor Aleksander Stanislaw, a fellow German expat with whom he develops an almost filial bond. But Oskar’s American idyll is shattered when he accidentally causes Stanislaw’s death and, facing a lengthy prison sentence, reluctantly returns to Germany to serve in the Luftwaffe in exchange for commutation.
Into the Skies of War
The harrowing chapters detailing Oskar’s experience as a reconnaissance pilot vividly convey both the adrenaline rush of aerial combat and the sheer terror of being shot down behind enemy lines. Graydon pulls no punches in depicting the physical and psychological toll of war, from the grisly death of Oskar’s crewmates during a mission over Yugoslavia to his own agonizing ordeal stranded in the North African desert.
The scene where Oskar’s Junkers 88 is shot down over the North African desert is particularly harrowing:
“Complete focus, despite the hum of conversation around me. This would be my sixth flight in a Ju 88. Enough experience, I told myself. But this was no game anymore.”
The author’s vivid prose puts us right in the cockpit with Oskar, feeling the terror and disorientation of the crash. The subsequent scenes of survival in the desert are equally compelling, highlighting the fragility of life in wartime. Tellingly, it is thoughts of his mother Aneta, not his father, that sustain Oskar through his darkest hours.
Love and Loss in the Aftermath
But even as he survives being captured by the British and endures years in a POW camp, Oskar cannot escape the lingering shadow of his father’s abuse. Plagued by nightmares and a crushing sense of inferiority, he nonetheless finds solace in the love of his English bride Miriam. The depiction of their tumultuous marriage is one of the novel’s most affecting storylines, as two damaged souls struggle to build a life together while burdened by the traumas of their respective pasts.
Becoming a father himself only deepens Oskar’s need to understand what drove Karl Bachmann’s cruelty. Why did he seem to derive such sadistic pleasure from beating his bookish, sensitive younger son while doting on the more traditionally masculine Emil? What happened to him during WWI to make him so full of rage? Was it simply his disappointment in Oskar for failing to live up to some twisted masculine ideal, or was there something more sinister at play?
These questions continue to gnaw at Oskar even as he finally achieves his dream of becoming a professor of psychology after the war. Oskar’s inability to fully open up to his wife and children creates a painful echo of his own father’s emotional distance:
“I had not been much more attentive to my own children but had never beaten them. Mine was more of a long-term, casual lack of interest.”
A Web of Secrets Unraveled
In a powerful set piece, Oskar scandalizes his students and risks his career by delivering a searing confessional lecture about his upbringing entitled “Leaving Fatherland”—a bold declaration of his intent to break free from his father’s toxic influence once and for all.
But the truth, it turns out, is more shocking than Oskar could have imagined. Through a series of deathbed revelations orchestrated by the mysterious private investigator Huber, he learns that Karl Bachmann was not his biological father at all. Instead, Oskar was the product of a secret affair between his mother Aneta and none other than Professor Stanislaw—or rather, Stanislaw’s father Eryk, a wealthy Polish businessman with shadowy ties to the Nazis.
In a devastating twist, it emerges that Eryk used his vast resources and web of connections to covertly shape the course of Oskar’s entire life, engineering everything from his acceptance to university in New York to his fortuitous rescue after being shot down in the desert. The man Oskar accidentally killed, it transpires, was his own half-brother. Most horrifyingly of all, Oskar finally understands the real reason for Karl’s unhinged brutality: he knew all along that Aneta’s child was not his own.
The final chapters of “Leaving Fatherland” see Oskar grappling with newfound knowledge about his family’s Jewish heritage, adding yet another layer to his complex sense of self:
“I suddenly felt an acute awareness of every sound, movement and smell on the ward. A sense of great shame came over me. Despite all the evidence, I had never connected the dots and come to terms with the fact that Mother was a Jew.”
This series of bombshell revelations unfolds with the sickening momentum of a waking nightmare as the dying Oskar processes the extent to which his life has been a lie. And yet, in Graydon’s sensitive handling, this potentially melodramatic material lands with authentic emotional force, reading less like mere plot twists than the long-delayed reckoning of a man determined to excavate the secrets buried in his family’s past.
Themes of Identity and Belonging
Indeed, it is the richness and specificity of Graydon’s characterizations that ground the novel’s more shocking moments in recognizable human behavior. From the warm but haunted Aneta to the roguishly charming Aleksander, these feel like real people shaped by the complex tides of history rather than authorial puppets. Oskar himself emerges as an utterly convincing creation, his decency and compassion coexisting with a streak of prickliness born of deep-rooted insecurity. Watching him slowly learn to extend empathy and forgiveness to himself and those who’ve wronged him is one of the novel’s most affecting pleasures.
Leaving Fatherland is also enriched by an impressive attention to historical detail, with Graydon weaving in everything from popular songs and slang to period-specific military hardware. Oskar’s enthusiasm for books and psychology adds another layer of verisimilitude, allowing Graydon to deftly incorporate exposition about contemporaneous developments like behaviorism and aversion therapy. At times the density of information can obscure the forward momentum of the narrative, but for the most part Graydon maintains a skillful balance between edification and storytelling.
A Haunting Exploration of War’s Long Shadow
The novel’s bittersweet conclusion feels earned and true to the complex tapestry of Oskar’s life. While he may not find all the answers he seeks, there’s a sense of hard-won peace in his final moments that’s genuinely touching:
“I hadn’t bought her that house in the Karkonosze Mountains, like I had promised. She forgave me though. I knew she did. I rocked ever so gently in my bed. To and fro. A little less movement every time. Not, this time, to soothe my fear of Father, but to bring me nearer to Mother’s love. And then, I moved no more.”
In the end, Leaving Fatherland’s greatest accomplishment may be its nuanced exploration of the myriad ways that violence deforms both victim and perpetrator. Through the intersecting stories of Oskar, his parents, and the extended Stanislaw/Bachmann clan, Graydon traces the insidious ripple effects of personal and historical trauma across generations. At the same time, he pays moving tribute to the redemptive power of love, literature, and self-knowledge. I will not soon forget the image of Oskar, eyes fluttering shut for the last time, finally rocking himself to sleep with a remembered snippet of the Yiddish lullabies his mother would sing him as a boy.
While it grapples with some of the darkest chapters of the 20th century, Leaving Fatherland is ultimately a hopeful, even inspiring story about one man’s dogged quest to break free from the cycle of abuse and secrecy that has warped his family’s existence. In his determination to confront the truth of his own past, Oskar Bachmann stands as a quietly heroic exemplar of the examined life. Matt Graydon’s powerful debut novel heralds the arrival of a bold and empathetic new voice in historical fiction. I look forward to following this promising writer’s career.
