"I have read few autobiographies more extraordinary . . . Astonishing" OBSERVER
"A classic. I preferred it to Primo Levi's If This is a Man" EDWARD WILSON
"A child's clear-eyed journey to hell" ANNE SEBBA
This is a story of a young boy's journey from a sleepy provincial town in Hungary during the Second World War to the concentration camp in Bergen-Belsen. After a winter in Bergen-Belsen where his father died, he and his mother were liberated by the Americans outside a small German village, and handed over to the Red Army. They escaped from the Russians, and travelled, hiding on a goods train, through Prague to Budapest.
Unlike other books dealing with this period, this is not a Holocaust story, but a child's recollection of a journey full of surprise, excitement, bereavement and terror. Yet this remains a testimony of survival, overcoming obstacles which to adults may seem insurmountable but to a child were just part of an adventure and, ultimately, recovery.
After having established a career in the West, the author decided to revisit the stages on his earlier journeys, reliving the past through the perspective of the present. Along the way, ghosts from the past are finally laid to rest by the kindness of new friends.
With an introduction by Lisa Appignanesi
Peter Lantos was born in 1939 in Hungary. He is a clinical neuroscientist who has recently retired from a Chair at the Institute of Psychiatry, King s College London. He is internationally renowned in his field and edited the leading textbook in neuropathology. Born in Hungary, he has been living in London for nearly four decades. His first novel Closed Horizon was published in 2012 by Arcadia. |
Category: | Biography & Memoirs |
ISBN: | 9781905147571 |
Publisher: | Quercus Publishing |
On sale: | April 2022 |
Format: | Paperback |
eBook ISBN |