The Kissinger Saga

An unrivalled insight into the early life of Henry Kissinger

'A triumph of journalistic digging, and it makes for a little gem of a book.. a magnificent story about boyhood, identity and belonging' SUNDAY TIMES

'Tells a fascinating and tragic story.. Kurz does a fine job of tracing the early history of the Kissinger family and evoking their happy days before the coming of Nazism' LITERARY REVIEW

'No interviews about my private life' has always been Henry Kissinger's response to curious journalists. But journalist Evi Kurz from Furth, the Kissingers' home town in southern Germany, proposed a family portrait and eventually won the trust of both brothers. This is the story of two Americans of German-Jewish descent: one of them a key figure in Cold War diplomacy and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, the other a top businessman - two lives which are exemplars of the American dream.

When Henry was born in 1923 and Walter in 1924 the Kissingers had for decades been part of a flourishing Jewish midde class in Furth, a market town in northern Bavaria. Evi Kurz describes the gradual but remorseless destruction of this community in the 1930s; the Kissinger family's decision to flee to London and then New York in 1938; the war years in America; and the hugely successful careers in postwar America of both brothers, who always remembered their home and roots in a small German town.