Rachel Seiffert Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Collections

Publication Order of Anthologies

Rachel Seiffert is a bestselling literary fiction author from London that is best known for her bestselling fiction novel “The Dark Room.” This work would get her shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and was also adapted into Lore the feature film.

In 2003, Granta magazine named Rachel one of the Best Young British Novelists. She would also receive the American Academy of Arts and Letters EM Forster Award.

She has also been awarded the PEN international award and several of her works have been longlisted for the Women’s Prize. Her novels have over the years been translated into more than eighteen languages.
Seiffert has made a reputation for herself writing about people living in extraordinary times. She now has more than a dozen works to her name spread across several novellas, collections of short stories, and single-standing novels.

When she is not writing her novels or teaching, she can often be found knitting, gardening, or walking her dog. She has said that knitting particularly helps her with the thinking process for her novels.

One huge irony about Rachel Seiffert is that she never thought she would become an author. Even now when she is a very serious author and writes every weekday for about five hours, she is not so sure that she is going to make a profession of it.

At some point, she studied film and became a film editor in training working in London and living in Scotland. She used to spend the week in London and flew home for all her weekends.
During this time, Seiffert really wanted to become a film editor but she hated the long hours. What she hated, even more, was that most male editors were alcoholics, and women were relegated to menial jobs if they took the time to start families.

She did not want that kind of life and hence for a year, she was adrift until she penned a film script and thought maybe she was good enough at writing. It was during this time that she came up with the idea for her debut novel The Dark Room.

She was then at Glasgow and Strathclyde University studying creative writing. As the daughter of an Australian father and a German mother, she could identify with the German experience during the Second World War.

For a long time, Rachel Seiffert was employed at Glasgow University and Goldsmiths College where she taught creative writing.

She has also delivered seminars in diverse places such as the Faber Academy in London, Manchester University, and the Berlin-based Humboldt University.
She has also been a tutor in schools where she has delivered numerous workshops to public schools in London.

Seiffert is currently working at the Haseltine School where she is a Writer in Residence in addition to working at the Tulse Hill-based Fields Secondary.

Rachel Seiffert’s novel “The Dark Room” is a trio of stories that could not be any more different. Ultimately, they are stories of how three disparate Germans deal with the rise and fall of Nazis in Germany.
The first story is all about the ascent of Nazi Germany during the 1930s that were filled with glory. The story is told from the perspective of a young man who is very naive.
The second tells the story of Germany following the end of the Second World War after being beaten by the allies.

The lead is a 14-year-old who survived the disappearance of her parents who were ardent Nazis and is now struggling to move with her siblings to Hamburg.

The third story is the story of a young man living in the present day. He is looking to find the truth about the rumor that his father had served in the SS.

His investigation very nearly results in the destruction of the relationships with his girlfriend and his family.

The first two stories are great in their own right but it is the third which is both challenging and fascinating.

“A Boy in Winter” by Rachel Seiffert makes for a shocking expiration of the arrival of the Nazis in Ukraine seeking to implement the final solution.

The lead is an engineer named Otto Pohl who is in charge of a German road in Eastern Europe. He wakes up to find dozens of SS men shepherding hundreds of Jews into an old building.
Inside the building, Ephraim who is one of the Jews is scanning the crowd anxiously looking for his two children.

He has a sneaky suspicion that his son would probably hide somewhere rather than line up in an elderly fashion when instructed by the Germans. He also knows that his younger brother would most likely follow his lead.

Meanwhile, a farmer’s daughter named Yasia who had come to sell some produce in town sees two boys moving with stealth through the deserted and shadowy streets.
She offers to shelter them and soon enough, their lives are becoming very intertwined. It makes for an interesting story full of emotional depth.

Rachel Seiffert’s novel “Afterwards” is a stunning work that tells of the brutal aftereffects of war.

The lead protagonist in the novel is Alice, even though the novel also ropes in other people around her.

These include the recently widowed David who is her maternal grandfather and Joseph her boyfriend who has been keeping all manner of secrets from friends and family.
During the Mau Mau Rebellion, David had served in the British Army in Kenya before he went on to serve in Northern Ireland. As the relationship between Joseph and Alice continues to develop, she starts to sense that he may be hiding things from her.

It is galling to her, particularly since she has revealed all manner of emotional and personal details to him. The biggest secret was that she had never met her father and had failed to reconnect with him even in adulthood.

Following the death of her grandmother, her relationship with her grandfather turned awkward. She cannot relate to him the weather grandma did but feels she is obligated to offer support and visit.
Gradually, it becomes clear that David is still in trauma from events that happened in Kenya where he met her grandmother.