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The Light at the End of the Day

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The Light at the End of the Day

By: Eleanor Wasserberg
Narrated by: Kate Sobey
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About this listen

 A family scattered. Lovers torn apart. A painting that unites them all.

When Jozef is commissioned to paint a portrait of the younger daughter of Kraków’s grand Oderfeldt family, it is only his desperate need for money that drives him to accept. He has no wish to indulge a pampered child-princess or her haughty, condescending parents – and almost doesn’t notice Alicia’s bookish older sister, Karolina.

But when he is ushered by a servant into their house on Kraków’s fashionable Bernadyńska street in the winter of 1937, he has no inkling of the way his life will become entangled with the Oderfeldts'. Or of the impact that the German invasion will have upon them all.

As Poland is engulfed by war, and Jozef’s painting is caught up in the tides of history, Alicia, Karolina and their parents are forced to flee – their Jewish identity transformed into something dangerous, and their comfortable lives overturned …

Spanning countries and decades The Light at the End of the Day is a heart-breaking novel of exile, survival and how we remember what is lost.

©2020 Eleanor Wasserberg (P)2020 HarperCollins Publishers Limited 20th Century Fiction Historical Fiction Jewish World Literature

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Critic reviews

"A beautiful and tragic story of love, cruelty and loss. Wasserberg is a natural storyteller with hypnotic descriptive powers. In her company you feel completely held, as if in the palm of a hand." (Megan Bradbury, author of Everyone Is Watching)

"A masterpiece of storytelling. Eleanor Wasserberg is a skilled portrait artist of the human instinct, and her characters are perfectly balanced in their intricate colours, beauty, and flaws. This book broke my heart." (Nick Bradley, author of The Cat and the City)
All stars
Most relevant  
heartbreaking, poignant, frustrating at times. hard to empathise with Alicia at times, being so spoilt. would have liked to have known more of Carolina's story. overall definitely recommend.

a good listen

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