foreword b~ the<br > ou| ho r s son<br > I never met my father. Men from the Gestapo came for him in Apri<br > vO4a， one month before my birth. Perhaps my mother s advancec<br > condition had something to do with their not taking her away too<br > "It s a routine interrogation，" they told her， but she knew that wasn <br > so， that she d never see Father again. After the war， over a period o<br > months， my mother questioned former inmates of the concentratior<br > camps where Danes were habitually sent， but no one had even seer<br > him.<br > Only years later， when I began asking my mother more specific<br >questions about the man whose picture I had always had beside my<br >bed， did I find out about the novel. In the months preceding his arrest<br >and disappearance， really from the moment he knew for certain that<br >someone like me was on the way， my father set out in his spare time<br >to write a work of fiction. I m told he joked about it， saying he d<br >already planted so many trees， and now that a child was about to bless<br >our turbulent world the only thing lacking was to write a book， and<br >in times like these it had to be done fast， because one never knew how<br >much time was left. It appears that he managed to finish the first draft<br >a few weeks before the Gestapo squadron came to get him， but my<br >mother never read it and didn t even know where the manuscript had<br >gone. She assumed， naturally enough， that it had been lost or had<br >ended up in the possession of some obscure colonel of the secret<br >police.<br > Recently， however， we recovered the novel， after its being missing<br >for Some thirty-odd years. A cousin of mine found it in the bottom<br >of a trunk full of old papers and periodicals， as she was preparing to<br >move from the huge country house that was now too big for her<br >family now that her children had married. We figured that my father<br >