A Story about History’s Inescapable Effect on Personal Relationships

The Stench is a Pushcart Prize story written by Jillian Becker. It is set in Heidelberg, Germany, during and immediately after World War Two, and twenty years later in South Africa during the apartheid years.

It is about two men, one black, one white, who could be friends - if history did not stand between them.

Why would African villagers boil a horse? Konrad Reitzger, who learnt to steel himself against horrors as a soldier of the Third Reich and prisoner of war, is determined to solve the mystery. The village headman, whom Reitzger likes and respects, gives only an implausible and taunting explanation, which annuls the friendship between them. It is through recollections of his father whom he despised - a chemist who worked on the production of the gas used by the Nazis in the extermination camps - that Reitzger finds the answer, and is profoundly disturbed by its implications.  

The Stench has been praised as beautifully written, marvelously evocative, multi-layered, deep and thought-provoking.
 
 
 
 
The Stench
Written by Jillian Becker
Paperback | $ 5.92
Kindle | $ 5.92
 
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About the Author
 
Jillian Becker was born in Johannesburg, South Africa. She is a prize-winning story writer, novelist, a researcher, and a critic. She has written several books about terrorism. Most of her fiction books were once banned or embargoed by the apartheid regime. She also writes non-fiction, one of which is the international bestseller: Hitler’s Children: The Story of the Baader-Meinhof Terrorist Gang. One of her recent books is about the death of her friend, Sylvia Plath.

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