But Can the Phoenix Sing?
Christa Laird
Published by Red Fox (March 1995)
0-09-950121-X, £3.50 pbk
I defy anyone to read this book and not be moved to tears. Told in the form of letters, the extraordinary story of a young partisan, Misha, who escaped from the Warsaw ghetto at the age of 14, makes harrowing reading. Misha has the dubious advantage of having Aryan features which disguise his Jewish birth, but allow him to outwit the Nazis. It's a chilling tale of a young person becoming conditioned and hardened to violence, killing and the appalling slaughter going on around him. But there's also his love for Eva and the companions with whom he shares both life and death which gives him hope for the future despite all the evils of war.
Reviewed in BfK No. 93 (July 1995) by Val Bierman (VB)
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