Day After Night

By Anita Diamant
(Scribner Book Company, Hardcover, 9780743299848, 304pp.)

Publication Date: September 8, 2009

Categories: General

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Selected by Indie Booksellers for the September 2009 Indie Next List
“Four women with four different stories of surviving the European Jewish Holocaust find themselves in an internment camp run by the British military in Palestine as illegals, Jews without papers. Based on the true story of a dramatic rescue in 1945 of more than 200 prisoners at the Atlit internment camp, this extraordinary novel is equal parts history, adventure, and celebration of the profound determination of the human psyche. I loved this book and will recommend it for reading groups.”
-- Kris Kleindienst, Left Bank Books, Saint Louis, MO


Description
Just as she gave voice to the silent women of the Old Testament in "The Red Tent," Anita Diamant creates a cast of breathtakingly vivid characters -- young women who escaped to Israel from Nazi Europe -- in this intensely dramatic novel.

"Day After Night" is based on the extraordinary true story of the October 1945 rescue of more than two hundred prisoners from the Atlit internment camp, a prison for "illegal" immigrants run by the British military near the Mediterranean coast south of Haifa. The story is told through the eyes of four young women at the camp with profoundly different stories. All of them survived the Holocaust: Shayndel, a Polish Zionist; Leonie, a Parisian beauty; Tedi, a hidden Dutch Jew; and Zorah, a concentration camp survivor. Haunted by unspeakable memories and losses, afraid to begin to hope, Shayndel, Leonie, Tedi, and Zorah find salvation in the bonds of friendship and shared experience even as they confront the challenge of re-creating themselves in a strange new country.

This is an unforgettable story of tragedy and redemption, a novel that reimagines a moment in history with such stunning eloquence that we are haunted and moved by every devastating detail. "Day After Night" is a triumphant work of fiction.