gwen edelman

Two Holocaust survivors, now married, return to the site of the Warsaw Ghetto they fled forty years ago in this “riveting, dream-like” novel (The New York Times Book Review).
 
In 1942, Jascha and Lilka separately fled from the Warsaw Ghetto. Reunited years later, they now live in London where Jascha has become a celebrated writer, feted for his dark tales about his wartime adventures. Forty years after the war, Jascha receives a letter inviting him to give a reading in Warsaw. He tells Lilka that nothing remains of the city they knew and that wild horses couldn’t drag him back.
 
Lilka, however, is nostalgic for the city of her childhood and manages to change Jascha’s mind. Together, traveling by train through a frozen December landscape, they return to the city of their youth. When they unwittingly find themselves back in what was once the ghetto, they will discover that they still have secrets between them as well as an inescapable past.
 
“With quiet but devastating force, Edelman plays the experience of being closed in—to trauma, to the past, to a ghetto—against the experience of being forever cast out.” —The New York Times Book Review
 
“A compelling tale told by two lovers, whose stunning, sometimes shocking dialogue ultimately becomes an exploration of the enduring wounds of the Holocaust, the mystery of memory, and the irresolvable traumas of lived experience.” —Haaretz (Israel)
 
“A powerful and moving novel that is both disturbing and exhilarating.” —Washington Independent Review of Books
 
“A well-crafted study of exile and return.” —Publishers Weekly