In the Full Light of the Sun

"Based on a true story, this gorgeous new novel follows the fortunes of three Berliners caught up in an art scandal--involving newly discovered van Goghs--that rocks Germany amidst the Nazis' rise to power. Hedonistic and politically turbulent, Berlin in the 1920s is a city of seedy night clubs and sumptuous art galleries. It is home to millionaires and mobs storming bakeries for rationed bread. These disparate Berlins collide when Emmeline,a young art student; Julius, an art expert; and a mysterious dealer named Rachmann all find themselves caught up in the astonishing discovery of thirty-two previously unknown paintings by Vincent van Gogh. In the Full Light of the Sun explores the trio's complex relationships and motivations, their hopes, their vanities, and their self-delusions--for the paintings are fakes and they are in their own ways complicit. Theirs is a cautionary tale about of the aspirations of the new Germany and a generation determined to put the humiliations of the past behind them. With her signature impeccable and evocative historical detail, Clare Clark has written a gripping novel about beauty and justice, and the truth that may be found when our most treasured beliefs are revealed as illusions"-- Berlin in the 1920s is a city of seedy night clubs and sumptuous art galleries, where nothing is quite what it seems. It is home to Emmeline,a young art student; Julius, an art expert who loves paintings more than people; and Frank, a Jewish lawyer looking for a way to protect both his family and his principles as the Nazis begin their rise to power. Rachmann, a mercurial art dealer-- and newly discovered paintings by Vincent van Gogh-- will provide a scandal that turns all their lives upside down. -- adapted from jacket

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Fiction, Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.