Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed,

for you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

Hello and welcome to Bookworm.

This is Michael Silverblatt, and today my guest is Ron Hansen.

He's the author most recently of Hitler's niece, a new novel.

It's his sixth book of fiction, which began with a novel Desperados, followed by the assassination of Jesse James,

by the coward Robert Ford, Nebraska, which was a book of short stories, Mariette and Eccas,

and Atticus. Hitler's niece is like his early work, a historical novel, and it's about the affair

that Hitler had with his half-niece, gaily raubble, which is held by some historians to have been

the one true love relationship that we can point to in Hitler's career.

And it is an obsessive and dark relationship.

What interested you in it?

How did you get started?

I came across Gaily Roble by reading Alan Bullock's biography of Hitler, Hitler and Stalin

parallel lives. And in there he had said that this was the only woman who had ever loved and could ever

imagine marrying. And the dynamic of a young girl being captivated by her uncle and only

gradually understanding who that uncle really was,

struck me as a great story idea.

And then when I was doing research and started writing, I actually mentioned it to John Irving.

...