Testament
Shortlisted for Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award
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4.7 • 3 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
*Longlisted for the Desmond Elliot Prize * Winner of the Bath Novel Award * Shortlisted for the Author's Club Best First Novel Award *
'What a writer. I was totally captivated. Moving and ultimately uplifting' HEATHER MORRIS, author of The Tattooist of Auschwitz
'An important and beautifully written novel by a young writer of immense talent. I was deeply moved' Andrew Miller, author of Now We Shall Be Entirely Free
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.
Customer Reviews
A writer to watch
Author
English. Studied creative writing at Uni of East Anglia. Now Senior Lecturer at the Uni of the West of England. This, her first novel, received critical praise and won an award or two, but was swamped in the public consciousness when Margaret Atwood’s ‘The Testaments’ came a year later.
Precis
The protagonist Eva is a 24-year-old female doing a masters in documentary filmmaking while caring for her elderly grandfather Joseph Silk, a famous English artist. No one, including Joseph, ever talks about the fact that his real name is József Zyyad,
and he arrived in London from his native Hungary in 1945. Joseph told our gal that was when his life started, which is understandable. Life for Jews in Hungary under German occupation was no picnic even if they didn’t end up in a cattle truck headed for Auschwitz. Eva is cleaning up when she discovers correspondence from a German museum that collates the testimonies of Holocaust survivors. Wouldn’t you know it? Joseph/József did one, although he didn’t give permission for it to be made public before he croaked. Eva goes to Germany to investigate, and possibly make a doco. A story which starts out small and personal ends up big. (It will come as no surprise that Mr Sherwood’s grandparents were holocaust survivors.)
Writing
Spare, modern and intensely literary, but above all compelling. There is plenty of Holocaust literature out there, all of it emotive for obvious reasons. Some are tiring of it. (FTR, I’m not.) Heather Morris of ‘Tattoist of Auschwitz’ fame gave this one a plug, which was generous of her because Ms Sherwood writes rings around Ms Morris IMHO. She is no one trick pony either. Her second novel is a “Double-O” title commissioned by the Ian Fleming Trust.
Bottom line
A writer to watch