Skeletons at the Feast

A Note to the Reader In order to provide reading groups with the most informed and thought-provoking questions possible, it is necessary to reveal important aspects of the plot of this bookas well as the ending. If you have not finished readingSkeletons at the Feast,we respectfully suggest that you may want to wait before reviewing this guide. In the chaotic months before the final collapse of the Third Reich, the Germans living in the eastern part of Hitler's empire fled their homes to escape the onslaught of the Soviet Army. If these refugees didn't know the specifics of the atrocities their people had committed on Russian soil and, in fact, were still committing in concentration camps across Poland and Germanythey nonetheless understood that the Russians were going to be merciless. It is this world that Chris Bohjalian brings vividly and powerfully to life inSkeletons at the Feast. A Prussian aristocrat struggles west with her beautiful daughter, her young son, and a Scottish prisoner of war. Meanwhile, a female Jewish prisoner struggles to survive first the horrors of a concentration camp and then a forced march west in the ice and snow of a German winter. And a Jewish man who has leapt from a train bound for a death camp learns to do whatever he must to survive. This reader's guide is intended as a starting point for your discussion of the novel.Bohjalian, Chris is the author of 'Skeletons at the Feast' with ISBN 9780307394958 and ISBN 0307394956.