Testament: Shortlisted for Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award
English
By (author): Kim Sherwood
'What a writer. I was totally captivated. Moving and ultimately uplifting' HEATHER MORRIS, author of The Tattooist of Auschwitz
'I am absorbed by the delicacy, even the beauty, with which she writes of the trauma of history' AMIT CHAUDHURI
WINNER OF THE BATH NOVEL AWARD
Of everyone in her complicated family, Eva was closest to her grandfather: a charismatic painter - and a keeper of secrets. So when he dies, she's hit by a greater loss - of the questions he never answered, and the past he never shared.
It's then she finds the letter from the Jewish Museum in Berlin. They have uncovered the testimony he gave after his forced labour service in Hungary, which took him to the death camps and then to England as a refugee. This is how he survived.
But there is a deeper story that Eva will unravel - of how her grandfather learnt to live afterwards. As she confronts the lies that have haunted her family, their identity shifts and her own takes shape. The testament is in her hands.
Kim Sherwood's extraordinary first novel is a powerful statement of intent. Beautifully written, moving and hopeful, it crosses the tidemark where the third generation meets the first, finding a new language to express love, legacy and our place within history.