Childhood

'The book of this damned century' Alan SillitoeA small boy grows up in Amsterdam, making sand pies, playing with his favourite jumping jack toy, visiting his father's office as a treat. He is loved. Then men with guns come in the night to take them away, and the familiar world of his childhood is destroyed.In this searing, spare novel Jona Oberski, who was transported to Bergen-Belsen as a young boy, recreates the state of childhood with unblinking, almost unbearable clarity. Conveying the joy of family life and the terror of separation, these vivid, haunting snapshots of memory have the darkness and strangeness of the most terrible fairy tale, as a child tries to understand the horror unfolding around him.Jona Oberski was born in 1938 in Amsterdam. He studied and worked there as a nuclear and particle research physicist, and still lives there with his wife Froukje Slijper. He is the father of three sons, two from an earlier marriage.'A book which will shock every reader with a heart' Isaac Bashevis Singer'This is not the book of the year, but the book of this damned century. [It is] real art... this novel is going to reach everyone and go on reaching people for generations to come' Alan Sillitoe'A child sees the barbarities of such an event [the Holocaust] not in terms of race or politics, but the way a Martian would see them, as amazing and stupefying instances of the cruelty of man. Jona Oberski conveys this amazement in an unembroidered and memorial way' Thomas Keneally, author of Schindler's Ark'An astonishing book memorable, piercing. It reaches the very soul' Chaim Potok'A dark fairy tale... of the fears and anguish of a child, based on experiences that could not be grasped by reason, irrational yet truly real' Heinrich Bll