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Original Essays | October 18, 2009

From Leprosy to Lorca — Strange Inspiration

0 comments By Victoria Hislop

My first novel, The Island, was inspired by a chance visit to a tiny island leper colony off the coast of Greece on our summer holiday. It was a... Continue »

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1. 
   $10.49 Sale Trade Paper add to wish list

   The Return

   Victoria Hislop

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Katherine Stuart, April 22, 2009

I dreaded reading another book about the Holocaust. And I foud the ending really, really hard to read. However Zukas writes deftly and manages to convey total, random senselessness of the Holocaust with little pockets of hope. His narrator is Death, very much in the tradition of Terry Pratchett's "Mort." The tone works beautifully with its dry humor and its subtle sense of awe of humans.

Our heroine is the scrappy, young Leisel whose father has been taken and mother, at the beginning of the book, may soon be taken by the Nazis -- for being Communists. Her brother dies right in front of her and she is haunted by him. To protect her from an unknown fate, Leisel's mother places her in foster care in Molching, Germany on Himmel St. (Himmel meaning "heaven") and in some ways -- though life on Himmel St. is hard -- it is heaven and it is filled with the sort of people one might like to meet in heaven -- though not all the characters are so likeable.

It is the story of a blond, white Germany who does not agree with the Nazis -- whose foster parents do not agree with the Nazis -- who still must grow up in Nazi Germany.

It's sweet and poignant and terribly, terribly tragic. And hopeful.

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