It is 1934 in Baden-Baden: silk-clad women come and go, as do the Mercedes in front of the plush hotels. A boy grows up and comes to consciousness at the same time that the red-and-black flags are unfurled, and the jack-booted men come to parade in ever-increasing numbers. But he is not a ?normal? boy; he and his family are ?enemies of the Reich? - they are Jewish. With a tone of elegant nostalgia infused by a sense of impending catastrophe, Drowning is the most poignant of childhood memoirs.