Those Who Save Us - a novel by Jenna Blum

This must be one of the most overlooked non-fictional accounts of the Holocaust. It's truly a gem and worth every minute spent reading it. Anna has never spoken to anyone about her experiences during World War II in Germany. Trudy was only a small child when Jack (an American soldier who was in Germany at the close of the war in 1945) brought Anna and Trudy to the United States to live with him. Trudy's only knowledge of her mother's past comes from a photograph that shows Anna, Trudy and a Nazi SS officer. Trudy grows up in the shadow of her mother's self imposed silence and guilt. Trudy also bears this stigma and carries vague memories of her bitter past. As a professor of German history, she creates a project to interview German women about their memories of the war, and specifically the roles they played in shaping the events of the Holocaust.

As the story progresses, switching between Anna's life during the war and Trudy's own efforts to comprehend her heritage - the reader gets a glimpse of the war from the perspective of ordinary German women... some traded their Jewish friends/neighbors for a morsel of bread, some watched in muted horror at their public humiliation, and some sacrificed their own lives to help those who were being unjustly persecuted. Anna's story is a compelling one .. one that will leave you raw with emotion.. at the ignobility of war, the perverse psychological ties people have to the those who protect them even if their saviors are the most despicable of human beings... and the ability of some people to rise above the baseness they witness all around them to become heroes.

It is very difficult to write a book about the Holocaust from the German perspective, without sounding self indulgent or outright offensive to the survivors of the most horrific event in the history of humanity - yet, the author maintains a dignified sense of respect towards those that perished and survived, while pointing out the small, but significant instances of goodness that existed in a barbaric time.

The Space Between Us - a novel by Thrity Umrigar

Anyone who grew up in India in a middle class (or higher) family would be familiar with the narrative of this book. The story intertwines the past and present of two women - Bhima and Sera. Bhima works as a servant in an upwardly mobile Parsi household in Bombay.. her mistress, Sera appears to have it all --a loving husband and a doting child -- but is hiding a world of humiliation and disgrace.

Over the years Bhima and Sera develop a bond, which is born as a result of sharing household tasks, daily chores and the closeness that comes from experiencing life events together. However, their relationship is a precarious one - Bhima and Sera are not friends, nor are they simple acquaintances. Their connection is a complex sum of many parts.. convenience, guilt, benefaction, and the fact that they are both mothers, two women struggling to keep their men from breaking their spirit. However, they are two women on opposite ends of the class spectrum, and this is a gap that just can't seem to be bridged. It is this ambigious, shifting balance that is the focus of this bittersweet story. It puts a face on the millions of Bhima's in India - who serve their masters with unswerving faith, washing someone else's dishes, floors, clothes, only to come home to their own world of squalor.

Bhima is stranded in a perverse cycle of illiteracy, hard work, poverty, shattered trust and loss of loved ones in every chapter of her life. Does she manage to find any hope of redemption in her life? You have to read this beautifully written book to find out. Not only is the author's language authentic to her protagonists, but her writing is evocative of the rich prose that has characterized the works of some of my favorite Indian writers - Jhumpa Lahiri, Arundhati Roy and Rohinton Mistry.

Child 44 - a novel by Tom Rob Smith

This novel manages to blend a horrific crime story with a nerve-wracking look at Stalinist Russia - where fear, paranoia and a ruthless instinct for survival rule every day decisions. I wasn't suprised to learn that the author is a screenplay writer as well, because you can almost see the movie playing in your head as you read every chapter!



You will be transfixed by the backdrop of the story - which offers a chilling potrayal of 1950's Russia, just before and after Stalin's death. The novel is very well researched, offering accounts of the methods used by the MGB (Soviet State Security.. precursor to the KGB) to rid Soviet society of any semblance of dissidence. Even though the book is essentially a crime novel, the characters are very well developed, and serve to echo the helplessness and fear felt by people who lived in that era - a society with no freedom of choice or expression, where friendship and love are truly tested every day, where philosophers, thinkers and teachers are policed like common criminals. All for the sake of a cause, a "greater good" that started off as a cause worth dying for, and somewhere along the line, became a cause worth killing for.

The novel does read like a blockbuster movie mixed with philosophical musings (which are quite well written and not patronizing), and even though the premise does start to lose touch with reality towards the end, I was still hooked on to the very last page.. no easy feat with a 470 page novel!