The Orpheus Clock

The Search for My Family's Art Treasures Stolen by the Nazis

By: Simon Goodman

Narrated by: Derek Perkins

Simon Goodman's grandparents came from German-Jewish banking dynasties and perished in concentration camps. His father rarely spoke of their family history or heritage. But, when he passed away and Simon received his father's old papers, a story began to emerge. The Gutmanns, as they were known then, rose from a small Bohemian hamlet to become one of Germany's most powerful banking families. They also amassed a magnificent, world-class art collection that included works by Degas, Renoir, Botticelli, Guardi, and many, many others. But the Nazi regime snatched from them everything they had worked to build: their remarkable art, their immense wealth, their prominent social standing, and their very lives. With the help of his family, Simon initiated the first Nazi looting case to be settled in the United States.

©2015 Simon Goodman (P)2015 Dreamscape Media, LLC

Critic reviews

"With a novelist’s narrative gifts, Goodman movingly portrays his family’s victimization by the Nazis and the post-war repercussions of those events.... Goodman produces much more than another Holocaust book." ( Publishers Weekly)

Detailed and engaging

Well written and exceptionally narrated. This story takes a systematic approach to dissecting these ancient, deliberately covered up, and tangled plots to crimes of looting before, during and after WWII.
Well written, engaging, relevant, it illuminates the contemporary reverberations of Nazism, and how together with a cast of professions e.g. curators, governments, philanthropists, have helped and often hindered the reclamation process. Very enlightening.

Undoubtedly winding whereabouts of art

Passionate driven tale of a astonishing art collects and his whereabouts to recover.

An history of three centuries of a family heirloom truncated by the fateful events of the first half of XX century how it links the generation to fulfill a void, beautiful related and powerful engaging, I love it !

Heartwrenchingly Triumphant

An immersive story of loss, terror, unspeakable cruelty, and unforgivable greed and injustice in its aftermath; but at the same time a story of beauty, faith, hopr, love, fabulous art, the power of persistence and through it all, the bond of roots and family history. Bravo, Mr. Goodman...your ancestors are indeed smiling on you!

A Masterpiece of 21st Century History

I first read The Orpheus Clock shortly after reading The Hare With Amber Eyes and recently re-read both. Although both are extraordinary and essential works of art and research in their own right, they are also major literary accomplishments in what has almost become a modern literary genre, the personal documentation of evidence of family trauma, history and discovery. This genre is not for the faint of heart, neither in the reader nor the writer. The volume and meticulousness of the research and the evidentiary standards, the cross referencing, the profundity of the psychological insights, the integrity of the first person narrative, are formidable.

The exquisite prose of Simon Goodman's painstakingly detailed narrative of his personal and historic journey to uncover one of the greatest scandals of the twentieth and twenty-first century is always thorough, dramatic, colourful and rich and never dull. It resonates with the warmth of the characters, the luxury and grandiosity of the wealth and art works of its subjects. As the events unfold, Goodman bears witness to the unparalleled brutality, systemic corruption and criminality that continued not only unpunished but most profitably, for the perpetrators, at the highest levels of the art world, in the justice systems and the halls of government, commerce and high finance, decades after the Holocaust and the end of the second world war. This is a book that should be required reading in every advanced history and art history class in Europe and the Americas.

I very much enjoyed Derek Perkins’s recording of The Orpheus Clock. Obviously, the reading and interpretation were immaculate. But I am also especially grateful for his pronunciation of Dutch, French, German, Italian and other non-English names, words and expressions, which was consistently precise and, as far as I know, correct. This is a refreshing change from the majority of English and American recordings. It is very distracting to hear such recordings routinely screw up anything that is not commonplace in the English language. It would have ruined any recording of The Orpheus Clock, in particular, because so much of the book involves details of international travel and research. So, I commend Derek Perkins’s work, at the highest level.

Read it!

Fabulous book from start to finish. You’ll find yourself hoping for another book from this writer. Fantastic narration and command of French and German pronunciations.

More Than Just the Orpheus Clock

Simon Goodman's grandparents lost all that they had, including their lives, to the Nazis during WWII. Simon's father spent part of his life looking for those lost items which included many paintings, jewelry, antique china, silver, and furniture. After his death, Simon and his brother took on this daunting task to find the lost treasures. Neither Dutch officials nor the auction house, Sotheby, came across as very helpful during their pursuit. The narrator did a fantastic job with the many foreign words.