“I am Jewish, more by accident than design,” explains Katja Petrowskaja in the opening pages of “Maybe Esther”, the intensely involving biography of her Polish-Ukrainian family. Spanning the Poland, Ukraine, Germany and Russia of the 20th century, from border changes to occupation to war and the darkest hours of Europe’s Jews, Petrowskaja’s book is much more than a memoir. This is a work of ongoing history, written with the impressionistic eye of a novelist, a fervent meditation on language and loss surging with a remarkable cast of characters, forgotten to time and memory for decades, here vividly summoned to life. Wry, questing, discursive, it has, unsurprisingly, become a bestseller and literary prize-winner throughout Europe.
Financial Times: ‘Maybe Esther’ by Katja Petrowskaja
A picture shows a statue depicting a soldiers' head at the World War II Savur Mohyla memorial in Snizhne, eastern Ukraine, on Oct. 15, 2014.
