Joe Dunthorne’s “Children of Radium” is a masterful work of investigative memoir that begins, as many family histories do, with a simple curiosity about ancestry. But what unfolds is far from the heroic tale of Jewish escape from Nazi Germany that Dunthorne initially expected to write. Instead, he discovers the unsettling truth that his great-grandfather, Siegfried Merzbacher—a German-Jewish chemist—was developing chemical weapons for the Nazi regime before fleeing to Turkey in 1935. This revelation sends Dunthorne on a quest across Europe and Turkey, probing the radioactive soil of his family’s buried secrets.
The Weight of Complicity and Memory
At the heart of this memoir is Siegfried’s own 2,000-page rambling confession, in which he acknowledges: “I confess to my descendants who will read these lines that I made a grave error. I have betrayed myself, my most sacred principles… I cannot shake off the great debt on my conscience.” These words haunt the narrative as Dunthorne attempts to reconcile the grandfather his family knew—the one who brushed his teeth with radioactive toothpaste and helped develop the “Doramad” brand—with the man who worked in a “pleasure palace” laboratory developing mustard gas and other chemical weapons that would later be used in atrocities.
Dunthorne’s prose is deceptively conversational, drawing readers into what feels like an intimate chat about family records, only to deliver gut-punches of historical horror:
“What made listening to this even worse was that the interrogator was me. This was the interview from 2012, the one where she told me to read a book about it, which I had taped but had never actually played back—for understandable reasons.”
This self-implicating honesty is what makes “Children of Radium” transcend the typical family memoir genre. Dunthorne isn’t merely uncovering his great-grandfather’s complicity; he’s examining his own willingness to believe comfortable myths about his family’s past.
Methodical Research Meets Poetic Sensitivity
What distinguishes this memoir is Dunthorne’s background as both novelist (Submarine, Wild Abandon, The Adulterants) and poet (O Positive). His research is meticulous—he follows paper trails through archives in multiple countries, interviews historians, and even purchases a Geiger counter to test radiation levels in Oranienburg, where unexploded WWII bombs still lurk beneath the radioactive soil.
Yet he approaches this material with a poet’s eye for metaphor and a novelist’s appreciation for character. When examining medical records from his great-grandfather’s psychiatric hospitalization, he notes how the doctors broke Siegfried’s experience into discrete themes: “family, school, work, marriage—so that all the mess of his life was tidied up and given shape.” This observation serves as a meta-commentary on memoir writing itself—the necessary but ultimately imperfect organizing of human experience into narrative.
Beyond the Personal: The Ripples of Complicity
Dunthorne wisely expands his investigation beyond Siegfried’s story. The memoir’s most powerful sections explore how chemical weapons developed in German laboratories were ultimately deployed in places like Dersim (now Tunceli), Turkey, where the Kurdish Alevi population was gassed in caves by the Turkish military in 1937-38. Dunthorne travels to this still-militarized region, where the past literally lurks beneath the surface—bones remain scattered in caves, and the town bristles with military watchtowers.
Here, Dunthorne confronts his great-grandfather’s legacy most directly when a local human rights activist tells him: “If your great-grandfather was involved in this massacre, this genocide—if he had any single role in this genocide—we forgive him.” The moment is devastating precisely because forgiveness comes from those who have no obligation to offer it.
The Women of the Story: Elisabeth and Lilli
Perhaps the book’s most revelatory material concerns the women in Siegfried’s life—his sister Elisabeth, who ran a children’s home for Jewish youth until the Nazis forced her to flee, and his wife Lilli, whose relationships with other women (including Elisabeth) were something Siegfried acknowledged but never fully processed.
Elisabeth emerges as a moral counterweight to Siegfried. While he made ethical compromises that preserved his career and eventually facilitated his family’s escape, Elisabeth repeatedly put herself at risk to protect vulnerable children. Dunthorne discovers that she worked until the end of her life to document the fates of her colleagues who stayed behind to care for children at the home, many of whom were eventually murdered at Auschwitz.
The book’s treatment of Lilli’s sexuality is handled with nuance. Dunthorne writes:
“It may also have been comforting to think that his wife’s relationships were not infidelity but grief.”
This insight about Siegfried’s rationalization perfectly captures how family narratives are constructed to preserve comfortable illusions.
Stylistic Brilliance and Occasional Digressions
Dunthorne’s prose shifts effortlessly between deeply researched historical analysis and moments of wry, dark humor. He describes his grandmother as having been “funny and honest and even when that honesty tipped into cruelty she used to get away with it because she laughed often with her head thrown back.” This kind of characterization brings his ancestors to life as complex, contradictory beings.
The book occasionally meanders, particularly when Dunthorne focuses on his own discomfort during research trips or when he tries to relate historical events to contemporary concerns about environmental contamination. These digressions, while interesting, sometimes dilute the power of the central narrative.
A Powerful Meditation on Inheritance
What makes “Children of Radium” exceptional is how it transforms from a detective story about a specific family into a universal meditation on inheritance—what we choose to remember, what we deliberately forget, and how complicity ripples through generations.
The book’s final section, where Dunthorne and his family receive German citizenship as descendants of victims of Nazi persecution, achieves a bittersweet resonance:
“It was interesting, simultaneously fraudulent and profound. While no burdens were suddenly lifted, there was a flash of connectedness, a sense of generations spreading out behind and ahead of us, like when you pull apart a paper chain and suddenly see all the human-shaped figures, dangling and holding on to each other.”
This image perfectly encapsulates the book’s themes of connection and disconnection, how we are both linked to and separated from our ancestors’ actions.
Final Assessment: A Landmark of Investigative Memoir
“Children of Radium” stands alongside works like Edmund de Waal’s “The Hare with Amber Eyes” and Philippe Sands’ “East West Street” in its fusion of personal and historical investigation. But Dunthorne brings unique literary talents to this crowded field—his novelist’s eye for revealing detail, his poet’s precision with language, and his willingness to implicate himself in the comfortable mythologies families construct.
The book succeeds both as gripping historical investigation and profound meditation on moral responsibility. It asks difficult questions: How do we judge those who made compromises to survive? What do we owe to the victims of weapons our ancestors helped create? And perhaps most haunting: What comfortable myths about our own lives might future generations dismantle?
Highlights:
Exquisite prose that balances historical research with intimate family narrative
Courageous excavation of uncomfortable truths about familial complicity
Powerful global connections between seemingly private family decisions and world-historical events
Nuanced treatment of complex characters, particularly the women whose stories history often overlooks
Thoughtful reflection on memory, selective forgetting, and how family narratives are constructed
Areas of Critique:
Occasional digressions that dilute the narrative’s focus
Some passages where personal discomfort during research overshadows historical material
A few sections where contemporary environmental concerns feel somewhat tenuously connected to the historical narrative
“Children of Radium” is not just a remarkable family history—it’s a profound meditation on how the past continues to emit its invisible influence, altering the present in ways we might prefer not to acknowledge. Like the radioactive elements that give the book its title, the half-life of complicity extends far beyond a single generation.