The Beautiful Mrs Seidenman (Abacus Books) - Tapa blanda

The beautiful Jewish widow Irma Seidenman has three attributes that keep her out of the Warsaw ghetto: blonde hair, blue eyes, and excellent forged papers. But one day in 1943 an informer denounces her to the Gestapo - and in the thirty-six hours following her arrest unlikely links are forged between a chain of disparate people - Poles, Jews and Germans, with motives righteous and base -in the attempt to rescue her. Ranging back and forward in time, by turns tender, ironic, sad and funny, Szczypiorski constructs a pattern of intersecting lives in a masterly and deeply compassionate exposition, not just of Warsaw, but of all victims, persecutors and spectators alike in a world at war. Like a pebble dropped cleanly into deep water. The Beautiful Mrs Seidenman stirs ripples and echoes around the brief, bleak events that it describes... This magnificent novel, excellently translated, is both heart-wrenching and optimistic' Observer The authorial voice - now gentle, now sardonic, but always piercingly omniscient - creates an unforgettable group portrait' Kirkus Reviews 'There's a Jamesian tenderness towards the heroine and a rich celebration of her city which makes this subtle, surprising work a little masterpiece' Guardian