Geraldine Schwarz's family never discussed what happened in the war. Neither heroes nor villains, her German grandparents were merely those who followed the current. But decades later, when delving through filing cabinets in the basement of their apartment building in Mannheim, Geraldine discovers that her grandfather Karl profited from the forced 'Aryanisation' of Jewish businesses, she is compelled to investigate her ancestors' past. Longlisted for the 2020 Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction 2020.