Walter Kempowski, All For Nothing, Granta 2016; first published in German 2006 Translated by Anthea Bell

Kempowski’s much-praised novel gives a perspective of WWII that I don’t recall often being depicted in fiction: the fate of rural German civilians in 1945 facing the advancing Red Army.

The setting is a once grand country estate in East Prussia that has fallen into decline. Most of the land has been sold off, and the decaying fabric of the buildings symbolises the general decline of the family that owns the estate, and by extension the German (and Nazi) cause. Eberhard, the current owner, is away in Italy serving (as an officer, of course) with the German army – though he seems to spend his time savouring the local wine and flirting with the girls.

In the first two thirds of the novel we follow the humdrum lives of the remaining members of the household: Eberhard’s beautiful, dreamy wife Katharina, their equally dreamy 12-year-old son, Peter, and their crabby eccentric ‘Auntie’, who runs things.

Over these weeks a number of refugees show up and are reluctantly allowed to stay temporarily in the house as they flee from the dreaded approaching Russians. It becomes increasingly apparent that the family can no longer avoid the inevitable invasion, and must join the stream of refugees heading south and west, believing the Reich will protect them there and ultimately turn back the Red tide.

I found this long section a bit of a slog at times: it’s written (and very ably translated by Anthea Bell) in a style that’s vaguely modernist. There are frequent non sequiturs and repeated tropes, such as the illicit trip to a Baltic seaside resort that Katharina made with a local political bigwig, and which she often daydreams about. Very little of consequence happens. But that’s the point: these are decadent, indolent people who live in a bubble, ignoring the atrocities perpetrated by their countrymen, and preferring the languid pose of complacent country gentry.

The final third is very different. As the family and their servants join the flood of refugees, they witness and experience terrible privations and death. Katharina is forced by circumstances to remain behind – her prospects don’t look good. This final section is taut and gripping, and shockingly abrupt.

The novel’s bleak title is spoken by Auntie as the family group flee: did she devote her life, unmarried, to this minor aristocratic family for nothing?

All For Nothing is strangely indirect or muted about the Nazi regime, despite frequent inserted ‘heil Hitler’ greetings – but the socio-political critique is implicit in every sentence.