[The Junkers is an ambitious novel and inevitably leaves a] confused, fragmented impression as one realises towards the end of the book that the author has failed, honourably, in his task: that of attempting to give an artistic explanation of some of the Dionysian forces in the German collective psyche during the last forty years. Sensibly, Mr. Read has adopted as the framework for his novel the story of a single Pomeranian family, the Von Rummelsbergs…. (p. 75)

[Mr. Read tells] the tale through the eyes of a young British diplomat, a second secretary to the political adviser in West Berlin, who first falls in love with the city and then, perhaps romantically, with Suzi von Rummelsberg, so providing a means of exploring a story whose undertones are all the more effectively caught for the restraint and the insight with which it is treated. Yet the episodes created around...