In the lead-up to the publication of my novel, Restitution, I’ve had lots of practice telling people what the book is about. By now, I can rattle it off. “As kids in Central Illinois, Kate and Martin were never told much about their mother’s East German childhood. Decades later, when the Berlin Wall falls, they must decide: Should they try to reclaim the house in East Germany from which their grandparents fled in the 1950s?”

Sometimes, though, people ask me more difficult questions: What are your obsessions? What is the story you feel compelled to tell? At first, I didn’t have a good answer. But then I realized that I’ve always been drawn to stories that explore the ways in which History and Politics shape people’s lives. Yes, I mean history and politics with a capital H and a capital P, but I also mean more intimate versions: family politics, personal history, memory. As a reader, I feel I’ve struck gold when I find books that intertwine these two things — when the personal and the political become one.

Perhaps it’s not a surprise that this interweaving of personal and political inspires my writing. After all, I’ve lived in Washington, DC — a city where the personal and political are frequently conflated — for a quarter-century. Over the years, I’ve been frustrated by how often “Washington” or “DC” are used as shorthand for the federal government.

Whenever the news kicks off with “Today, Washington sent a clear message,” I mutter to myself, “The government, not Washington!” After all, there’s a whole city here — the city where my children were born and raised, where friendships began, where I learned that my first novel would be published, where I celebrated birthdays and block parties and graduations. My personal memories are scattered across DC.

Still, I have to admit that politics is also everywhere in DC, a city where roughly 700,000 disenfranchised people live. DC has always been vulnerable to federal interference due to its lack of statehood, its tenuous home rule, and its unjust lack of representation in Congress. These days, with National Guard from other states patrolling our streets, this vulnerability feels dangerous in a new and deeply unsettling way. I am worried about the future of this city. How much power do we, its residents, hold to shape that future?

I have never felt driven to write about DC explicitly. My imagination is drawn to other settings, other places that I have lived, including the German settings of my novel. Still, I have no doubt that DC has strongly shaped the story I need to tell — how people are buffeted and scarred by political decisions, and how long those scars linger.

This theme is at the root of my novel. Many of the decisions made during Germany’s reunification in 1990 created a society that is still deeply divided more than 30 years later. Arguably, these divisions are also partly responsible for the terrifying increase in far-right support in eastern Germany — an increase that, although not limited to the east, is particularly dramatic there.

But this theme also hits closer to home. The other day, I drove past the White House, with the Capitol dome in the distance, and I had to wonder: How many decades and how much sacrifice will it take to undo the appalling decisions being made here today?

This question brings me back to Restitution again. In the book, I don’t just write about German reunification and its aftermath, but also about what came before, including the courageous protests that grew ever more forceful in the months leading up to the day the Berlin Wall fell. There’s a lesson in that history, too: People do have power. It’s a lesson I hope we don’t forget.

[Editor’s note: This piece is in support of the Inner Loop’s “Author’s Corner,” a monthly campaign that spotlights a DC-area writer and their recently published work from a small to medium-sized publisher. The Inner Loop connects talented local authors to lit lovers in the community through live readings, author interviews, featured book sales at Potter’s House, and through Eat.Drink.Read., a collaboration with restaurant partners Pie Shop, Shaw’s Tavern, and Reveler’s Hour to promote the author through special events and menu and takeout inserts.]

Tamar Shapiro was raised in both the U.S. and Germany and now lives in Washington, DC, with her husband, two children, and the world’s best dog. While writing her first novel, Restitution, Shapiro attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop Summer Program and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in Vermont, as well as year-long novel workshops at StoryStudio Chicago and the Writer’s Center in Bethesda. A former housing attorney and nonprofit leader, she is a 2026 MFA candidate at Randolph College in Virginia.