Author Talk: Peter Kupfer: The Glassmaker's Son

The Glassmaker’s Son recounts a son’s decades-long quest to uncover the world his father left behind in Nazi Germany.

"The Glassmaker’s Son” recounts author Peter Kupfer’s decades-long quest to uncover the world his father left behind in Nazi Germany. Along the way he made a series of surprising discoveries about his father’s family, who were major players in the Bavarian glassmaking industry before they were nearly annihilated in the Holocaust. The book weaves together the diabolical history of German antisemitism with the author’s memories of growing up on Willow Street in New Haven, yearning to get closer to his distant father, and his struggles with his sexuality. At heart, “Glassmaker” is about a search for identity — the identity of Kupfer’s soft-spoken, inscrutable father and of himself.

 Author Bio: Peter Kupfer is a San Francisco-based writer, editor and photographer.  He was a copyeditor at the San Francisco Chronicle for many years. He was born and raised in New Haven as Peter Cooper. He changed his named to Kupfer, his father’s original name, when he moved to San Francisco in 1992. “The Glassmaker’s Son," published in November by Amsterdam Publishers, is his first book.

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