From Publishers Weekly
This absorbing Holocaust novel is based on a factual episode: the detention of 1580 German Jewish refugees in a British penal colony on the island of Mauritius, off Africa's east coast, after their deportation from Palestine in 1940. The story is told by a fictive survivor, Hanna Sommerfeld, a plucky, cantankerous, septuagenarian widow, now living in Israel with her lawyer son, Martin, who was born on Mauritius. Hanna's brooding husband, Daniel, did not survive the four-and-a-half-year internment, an ordeal rife with typhoid, floods and malnutrition. Shuttling between past and present, Hanna recalls their tortuous escape from Germany on an overcrowded freighter, her deep guilt over Daniel's death, and the hunger strike she led on Mauritius. Now in Haifa, she takes pride in her son and discusses the afterlife with her pregnant granddaughter Lara, who's seeing a reincarnation therapist. (In one especially moving scene, Hanna's mother, in a concentration camp in 1942, communicates telepathically with Hanna moments before she dies.) Earl ( Gulliver Quick ) interviewed survivors of the Mauritius camp in order to find in this little-known instance of cruelty a stirring tale of ultimate triumph.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
At times it is painful to read this novel, which is based on the British internment of a group of European Jews on the island of Mauritius during World War II. The memories of Hanna, the heroine, told mostly in flashbacks, tear at the conscience and heart. The book begins in Vienna as Hanna and husband Daniel apply for visas to leave their Nazi-occupied home. What happens before they reach Mauritius is not new, but the story is still bone-chilling. Now old and living in Israel, Hanna finds new life after she finally sheds the burden of her guilt. And what is the source of her guilt? Simply surviving. Earl, whose first novel, Gulliver Quick (Permanent Pr., 1992), was nominated for a National Book Award in 1992, also captures the reality of old age magnificently. This is a beautiful book, highly recommended for anyone who cares. It is especially significant today in an era of "ethnic cleansing."-- Barbara Maslekoff, Ohioana Lib., Columbus
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
