Beyond belief

Imagine writing a novel on sheer adrenaline when you are 23 years old and running for your life. Imagine believing that the country of your birth, the only country you have ever known, has suddenly classified you as an enemy of the state and subjects you to torture, imprisonment, humiliation and pain. Imagine writing a novel in a fervour of rage, disbelief, astonishment and fear.

This is, in 1938, in a four-week frenzy following the horrors of Kristallnacht/The Night of Broken Glass, when the Nazis (referred throughout this novel as simply “The Party”) razed synagogues, seized Jewish businesses, destroyed Jewish property, burnt sacred texts, indiscriminately murdered and raped and subjected even the most patriotic assimilated German Jews to acts of public humiliation.