Eva's Cousin: A Novel by Sibylle Knauss, translated by Anthea Bell

Julia Pascal treats the fictionalised 'memoirs' of Eva Braun's cousin with extreme suspicion

News about Hitler's family – in Austria, Liverpool, the US – has trickled through the media but, until now, there has been nothing about Eva Braun's relatives. The story goes like this. Hitler's absences from Eva, while he murdered millions across Europe, created the need for someone to keep his bored mistress company. In the summer of 1944, Marlene, Eva's 20-year-old cousin, accepts Eva's invitation to Berchtesgaden, Hitler's Bavarian mountain retreat. Marlene becomes an innocent accomplice in a life of luxury while her fellow Germans are bombed by the Allies.

The cousin has kept quiet about her initiation into the Hitler ménage for more than 50 years. Now, revealing her name as Gertraud Weisker, she has spoken to the novelist Sibylle Knauss and the result is a mystifying mix of confession, romance and analysis. After Eva's unsuccessful suicide attempts, Marlene is brought in as a welcome distraction. Dressed in high heels, suits and furs, Eva and Marlene go shopping. Eva is more worried about her dress fittings than the half-starved citizens in Munich's rubble. Marlene is a willing accomplice in Eva's vapid lifestyle. But what is most powerful about this novel is the gradual build-up of Eva's character through Marlene's eyes: "Eva was avid for the power a man can wield and had not the faintest idea what to do with it."

Knauss presents a subtle tension between Marlene and Eva. Marlene enjoys Heisenberg's Quantum Theory while Eva thinks only of fashion. Eva needs Marlene to stave off solitude, but why does Marlene need Eva when she despises her cousin? "Eva never asked unsuitable questions just as she never wore unsuitable hats." It never occurs to Marlene to return to her anti-Nazi family. A growing horror and a strong fascination co-exist in her quite easily.

There is a novelettish element running parallel to the apocalyptic denouement of the Third Reich. While Europe is aflame, Marlene starts an affair with an SS officer. Knauss reveals Marlene consciously divorcing her sexuality from her intellect, and here the narrative becomes ridiculous.

Amazingly, while enjoying sex with the SS officer she is also hiding Mikhail, an escaped Ukrainian slave worker. This apparently contradictory behaviour stretches credibility. A cloying sentimental childhood is invented for Mikhail. But how could Marlene/Weisker have learnt this history from a starving slave who hardly spoke German? Here the writing is fanciful and the relationship unbelievable.

Is this story fact or fiction? Does Weisker suddenly expose her extraordinary Hitlerian youth to a serious novelist as a means of rehabilitation? I couldn't help feeling that the book's aim is to repair Weisker's shame at complicity with Eva and Hitler. It is impossible to guess what is true and what invented, and the author declines to clarify. The novel reads well and Anthea Bell's translation is very natural, but – historically – it is as empty as Eva's head.