AustLit

'In Acland Street, St Kilda, there is a small blue plaque beside the entrance to a clothing store, where once there stood a cafe called Scheherazade. I walk past it almost every day, this minor curiosity on an ever-changing thoroughfare. The plaque is easy to miss, and few people stop to read its inscription. But for those of us who remember the Babel-like din inside and schnitzels the size of a plate, that name –  Scheherazade – and the names Avram and Masha Zeleznikow draw us back to a tiny pocket of old Europe – lost Europe –  stitched into a seaside suburb in Melbourne at the farthest corner of the earth.' (Introduction)

'They chose not to speak and now they are gone. What's left to fill the silence is no longer theirs. This is my story, woven from the threads of rumour and legend.'

'Jakub Rand flees his village for Prague, only to find himself trapped by the Nazi occupation. Deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp, he is forced to sort through Jewish books for a so-called Museum of the Extinct Race. Hidden among the rare texts is a tattered prayer book, hollow inside, containing a small pile of dirt.

'Back in the city, Františka Roubíčková picks over the embers of her failed marriage, despairing of her conversion to Judaism. When the Nazis summon her two eldest daughters for transport, she must sacrifice everything to save the girls from certain death.

'Decades later, Bram Presser embarks on a quest to find the truth behind the stories his family built around these remarkable survivors.

'The Book of Dirt is a completely original novel about love, family secrets, and Jewish myths. And it is a heart-warming story about a grandson's devotion to the power of storytelling and his family's legacy.'

'When bad things happen, when things don't go according to plan, it's easy to say that you need to 'get over it' and 'move on'; it's much harder to actually do it. Esther never wanted to move on, especially not to a country town, especially not during a war. She was dragged there because her father thought it was right. Now he hides in a box all night and looks for heaven in the sky. Why couldn't she be normal, like everyone else? But when she becomes more 'normal', even becoming a member of the mysterious Junior Defence Squadron, things don't get any easier. Particularly when an enemy spy is found.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.