AustLit

'The troubled legacy of the Holocaust and World War II lives on in the awareness of the current generation of Australian youth, as this narrative testifies. In lyrical prose the story is imagined as letters written by three young people living in different parts of Europe at the end of WWII. The tale weaves together the lives of the characters as they survive and struggle to make sense of the War and its aftermath. They each write letters to a loved one of whose fate they are unaware. The lost Russian girl, Helga, relays to her friend, Olga, the desperation and dislocation she feels. Recounting his confronting emotions and loyalties, the Nazi boy soldier, Franz, writes home to his mother. Susanna, the Jewess, incarcerated in Bergen-Belsen, longs for her lost husband while she awaits knowledge of the fate of her children. More than a coming-of-age tale, The Handkerchief Map is a moving narrative about what happens when humans forget, and remember, that they are all part of the same tribe.' (From the publisher's website.)