RACHELLE UNREICH A Brilliant Life. Reviewed by Sandra Hogan
Rachelle Unreich tells her mother’s extraordinary story of surviving the horror of the Holocaust to go on and live ‘a brilliant life’. When the world is confusing, hostile, disturbing, books that tell stories of people who survive great adversity and go on to find...
JANE MESSER Raven Mother. Reviewed by Sandra Hogan
In searching for the truth about her grandmother, Jane Messer brings together both Jewish and Palestinian histories. Michael Messer was sure his mother never loved him. She had abandoned him twice, leaving him with strangers for years on end. His father told him that...
FRANCIS SPUFFORD Nonesuch. Reviewed by Robert Goodman
Award-winning author Francis Spufford’s new novel is a historical fantasy set during the Blitz in London. Francis Spufford’s fourth novel, Nonesuch, is a beguiling combination of historical and speculative fiction. Spufford effortlessly blends the experience of living...
LYNNE OLSON The Sisterhood of Ravensbrück. Reviewed by Ann Skea
Lynne Olson documents how, within the horror of a Nazi concentration camp, the women of the French Resistance continued to resist. In Paris, the granddaughter of Jacqueline Péry d’Alincourt remembers her grandmother entertaining three old friends to afternoon tea....
ANNE SEBBA The Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz. Reviewed by Justine Ettler
British historian Anne Sebba’s account of the Nazi death camp describes the dissonance of beautiful music in a place of suffering and death. A monstrous, life-and-death version of sing for your supper, The Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz fascinates as it horrifies with...
PHIL CRAIG 1945: The Reckoning. Reviewed by Braham Dabscheck
This conclusion to Phil Craig’s Finest Hour trilogy shows how, far from marking an end to war and suffering, 1945 created more of it. The world is imperfect, the relationships between and within nations held together by decaying, infected band aids and fraying string....
EVA MENASSE Darkenbloom. Reviewed by Ann Skea
In Austrian writer Eva Menasse’s new novel, the residents of a small border town are shaken when uncomfortable truths from the past come to light. Darkenbloom is a fictitious small town on the Austrian–Hungarian border: ‘A region where great spiritual, national, and...
DAMIEN LEWIS The Flame of Resistance: The untold story of Josephine Baker’s secret war. Reviewed by Suzanne Marks
Josephine Baker, the most glamorous and highly paid female entertainer of her time, was also an Allied spy in World War II. In The Flame of Resistance Damien Lewis has drawn on a profusion of new historical material, including previously undisclosed letters and...
DOMINIC SMITH Return to Valetto. Reviewed by Ann Skea
The new novel from the author of The Electric Hotel uncovers wartime secrets in an Italian village. Hugh Fraser is an American academic whose Italian mother, Hazel, used to take him to her home village in Italy for their summer holidays. He has fond memories of...
CATHERINE CHIDGEY Remote Sympathy. Reviewed by Paul Anderson
Catherine Chidgey’s latest novel has been shortlisted for the 2022 Dublin Literary Award and longlisted for the Women’s Prize. Buchenwald Concentration Camp was liberated by US Forces on 11 April 1945. In the days immediately following, the Americans...
JOHN HUGHES The Dogs. Reviewed by Paul Anderson
The new novel from award-winning writer John Hughes explores the transmission of trauma down the generations. Memory is a major theme in John Hughes’s corpus. The Dogs, his seventh book and fourth novel, reverberates with intergenerational family trauma and the ghosts...
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