Shadows of a Childhood: A Novel of War and Friendship
Gille was just five when her mother, Russian writer Irene Nemirovsky, was deported to Auschwitz, and the two never heard from each other again. This work is a fictionalized account of their wrenching separation and a piercing look at what it means to survive mass genocide. Told in the voice of Lea Levy, the book spans 13 years?from the Jewish child's arrival in a French convent school following her parents' arrest by the Germans to her college years at the Sorbonne. Throughout, it asks essential and timeless questions: What does it mean to witness widespread atrocity? Is evil endemic to the human condition? What is Jewish identity? Why does anti-Semitism persist? In addition, the book uses Lea's friendship with a spirited, slightly older Christian girl to explore the possibilities of healing intense childhood trauma. Gille, who died in 1996, was posthumously awarded France's prestigious Grand Prix de Lectrices in 1997 for this novel of understated grace and enormous power. Readers are sure to be deeply affected by this resonant and vexing work. Highly recommended.?Eleanor J. Bader, New Sch. for Social Research, New YorkCopyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to theHardcoveredition.