Children of Radium: A Buried Inheritance
Paperback Published on: 02/04/2026
Price: £11.99
Bookseller Reviews
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Brilliant, fascinating, moving
Joe Dunthorne's great-grandfather was the inventor of radioactive toothpaste. But was there more to his story?
Dunthorne's attempt to tell his great-grand... READ MORE
Poignant, honest and thoughtful.
Children of Radium follows Joe’s exploration into his family history through his great-grandfather’s unpublished memoir, and subsequently the more importan... READ MORE
An unexpected dive into family history
Dunthorpe's great-grandfather was a Jewish-German scientist who moved to Turkey to escape the Holocaust in the 1930s, and who later wrote a 2,000 page memo... READ MORE
Accessible, fascinating and eye-opening
A valuable and highly readable memoir on family history and how often the stories handed down through the generations may not quite be as they seem.
Joe D... READ MORE
A shocking voyage into European history's dark past.
An insightful and compelling exploration of collective memory, guilt and the shadow of the past, delivered with a novelist's flair and storytelling nous. D... READ MORE
A complicated and sobering history/ memoir.
A very interesting and accessible account of one family's path during the events of WW2, the author's great-grandfather played a significant role in the ma... READ MORE
Synopsis
Joe Dunthorne never met his great-grandfather Siegfried: an eccentric Jewish scientist who escaped Nazi Berlin in the 1930s and snuck back under cover of night to rescue the family heirlooms. Decades later, Siegfried wrote about his adventures in a memoir so long and rambling that almost no one ever managed to read it. Decades after that, his great-grandson Joe unearthed the dusty manuscript and got a nasty surprise. Because hidden on page 1,692 of the unreadable memoir was a shocking confession...
So begins a gripping journey into the twisting moral maze of the twentieth century – a journey to uncover a radioactive family secret.
Publisher information
- Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
- ISBN: 9780241517475
- Number of pages: 320
- Dimensions: 198 x 129 x 22 mm
- Weight: 252g
- Languages: English
Customer Reviews
View allInteresting, informative & honest memoir
Most people tend to think we roughly know our family history, & the author grew up considering his great-grandfather a fascinating figure. Siegfried Merzba... READ MORE
A masterpiece
I absolutely loved this. Dunthorne tells the story of his great-grandfather, Siegfried, a Jewish chemist who fled the Nazis for Turkey in the Second World ... READ MORE
Brilliant and thought-provoking
An interesting book about the past and discovering who you are (or rather, where you came from). The author’s great-grandfather, Siegfried Merzbacher, a Ge... READ MORE
Fascinating
Joe Dunthornes great grandfather Seigfried was a Jewish scientist who lived in Berlin during the 1930’s. After escaping to Turkey during the war years, Sei... READ MORE