Friends and Enemies

A search for political and personal truth across three generations, a story of idealism, love, cruelty and revenge set in England and Germany...

After a chance meeting in East Berlin filmmaker, Jon Cruft, finds more than he bargained for when he starts searching for the truth about his family’s past amidst the political and personal conundrums of the Cold War and beyond. From seventies idealism, via eighties pragmatism to turn of the century terrorism, Jon chases truth in life, love, friendship and art only to discover the destructive circularity of human existence.

The story follows Jon’s encounters and discoveries in the divided Berlin of 1973 and 1987 and the re-united Berlin of 2003, as well as the incompatible and combustible love affairs of his mother as told in a Mills and Boon style manuscript, uncovered by Jon in an a touching case of Cold War cooperation. It is a novel about unsettling physical and psychological experiences that bring Jon, his mother, and the people they meet, pleasure, pain, insight and despair. A book about overturned assumptions, friendship found and enemies revealed. 

“A broad canvas covering seventy years of recent history that the author manages to fill with conviction and a strong feel for human emotion and the relentless sweep of history.”

STEPHEN MASON

“A heady mix of styles and stories that takes the reader from Communist East Berlin to Nazi Dresden via the claustrophobic and cruel corridors of a 1930’s English Public School. Well-written, very readable and highly recommended.”

ELISABETH KLEEBLATT