This harrowing novel tells the story of 12-year-old twin sisters, Pearl and Stasha, who arrive at Auschwitz in 1944 with their mother and grandfather, but are separated from them and are taken to barracks where they are subjected by the maniacal physician Josef Mengele to torturous experiments. Chapters oscillate between the perspective of each twin and show the horrific objectification of human beings (“These Nazis had stupidly viscous ideas of what constituted a person…”). Pearl disappears, but Stasha harbours a hope that she is still alive, and when the camp is liberated, she travels through Poland searching for her lost twin. “I knew how important words were to life,” says Stasha. The book grapples with how to articulate unspeakable horror, how language and narrative can bear the unbearable, what happens when words fail. Poetic imagery of a poppy drawn by the twins’ mother recurs, remembered as a survival technique. A heartbreaking novel about compassion and cruelty, brutality and beauty.

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