PETRA

For readers of THE LIVES OF OTHERS and Michael Ondaatje's WARLIGHT, a fictionalized retelling of the life of eco-feminist, anti-nuclear activist, and founding member of Germany's Green Party, Petra Kelly—the extraordinary woman who took on two political superpowers, changed the course of history but ultimately is overcome by a singular and fatal love

Set at the height of the Cold War in Germany in the 1980s, Petra Kelly, a powerhouse behind the fight against nuclear missiles in West Germany, and Emil Gerhardt, a former NATO General who unexpectedly leaves both his marriage and his career, become lovers, vaulting to fame and political power as ‘the General and the Peace Maiden', the face of a new and life-affirming politics —but a darkening web of jealousy, Kelly's complicated nature, and the General's wartime Nazi past threaten them, activated by one Manfred Schwartz, an ex-lover of Petra and the story's narrator, who urges Petra to face the true nature of her complex General, and to draw back the shadowy curtain on his wartime Nazi past

• Shaena Lambert, the critically acclaimed and internationally published author of The Fallen Woman and Radiance, is herself a peace activist who in the 1980s helped bring Petra Kelly and the General to Canada for a peace festival