My brother's tears left a delicate, clean line on his face. I stroked his cheek, whispered, it's really you ... Dov and Yitzhak live in a small village in the mountains of Czechoslovakia, isolated both from the world and from the horrors of the war. But one day in 1944, everything changes. The Nazis storm the homes of the Jewish villagers and inform them they have one hour. One hour before the train will take them to Auschwitz. Six decades later, from the safety of their living rooms at home in Israel, the brothers finally break their silence to a friend who will never let their stories be forgotten. Malka Adler's extraordinary biographical novel of a family separated by the Holocaust and their harrowing journey back to each other is based on interviews with the brothers she grew up with by the Sea of Galilee. When they decided to tell their story, she was the only one they would talk to. Told in a poetic style reminiscent of Margaret Atwood, this is a visceral yet essential read...

In the eye of the war That tore the world apart A mother wants a son A daughter needs a mother Winter 1939: Danusha and her family are forced to flee their home when the Nazis invade Poland. Danusha's mother, Anna, changes her name and secures a position as a housekeeper in a German doctor's mansion in Kraków where Gestapo meetings are hosted in the kitchen... Her secret is their salvation, but what Danusha remembers most is the solitude, with only her baby brother and the girl in the mirror for company. All Anna ever wanted was a firstborn son. All Danusha ever wanted was a mother who would love her like a firstborn son. Instead she got one who could look a Nazi straight in the eye but not into the eyes of her own daughter. It is only years later, when their neighbours gather in the living room to hear Anna's stories, that Danusha finally realises her mother was never a cold unknowable sea but a storm-wracked sky – sometimes bright, sometimes dark, and always watching over her....