My Works

Sixteen-year-old Klara has a plan. She'll finish school, become a mathematician, and build a future beside her sister Rozsi. Maybe, if she's lucky, she'll get her new neighbour Paul Bloom to notice her along the way. It's a small life. But it's hers, and Klara intends to hold onto it.

In 1943 Hungary, that future begins to slip. Restrictions tighten around Klara's Jewish family, each new rule a small concession she tells herself she can endure. After all, she and Paul have become something she doesn't quite have a word for yet, and as long as she and Rozsi remain together, the rest feels survivable.

Then 1944 arrives. The veneer Klara has been fighting to maintain collapses. Her family is forced into the Nagyvárad ghetto, then deported to Auschwitz, where survival demands a calculus she cannot solve. The empathetic, reasoned girl she knew herself to be becomes harder to find. The only thing she can rely on is her anger.

And then she discovers the terror of having something left to lose.