A Boy in Winter

Longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2018

'A spellbinding evocation of fear and threat tinged with the possibility of hope and change. Completely captures those times in a vivid, precise, captivating and terrible way.' - Philippe Sands, author of East West Street, Observer

Early on a grey November morning in 1941, only weeks after the German invasion, a small Ukrainian town is overrun by the SS. Deft, spare and devastating, Rachel Seiffert's new novel tells of the three days that follow and the lives that are overturned in the process.

Penned in with his fellow Jews, under threat of transportation, Ephraim anxiously awaits word of his two sons, missing since daybreak. Come in search of her lover, to fetch him home again, away from the invaders, Yasia must confront new and harsh truths about those closest to her.

Here to avoid a war he considers criminal, German engineer Otto Pohl is faced with an even greater crime unfolding behind the lines, and no-one but himself to turn to.

And in the midst of it all is the determined boy Yankel who will throw his and his young brother's chances of surviving to strangers.

A Boy In Winter is a story of hope when all is lost, and of mercy when the times have none.