Charlotte Salomon is born into a family stricken by suicide and a country at war – but there is something exceptional about her. She has a gift, a talent for painting. And she has a great love, for a brilliant, eccentric musician.
But just as she is coming in to her own as an artist, death is coming to control her country. The Nazis have come to power and, a Jew in Berlin, her life is narrowing – she is kept from her art, torn from her love and her family, chased from her country. And still she is not safe, not from the madness that has hunted her family, or the one gripping Europe . . .
Charlotte is a heart-breaking true story – inspiring, unflinching, awful, hopeful – of a life filled with curiosity, animated by genius and cut short by hatred. A beautifully, lucidly told memorial, it has become an international sensation.
"From its striking first sentence there is no turning away . . . A far superior tribute to any commemorative plaque"
SARA BAUME
"An astonishing novel. Every line has something profound to say about love and loss, hope and fear, time and memory, and the enduring power of art"
ANDREW MICHAEL HURLEY, author of THE LONEY
"I am deeply, deeply affected by this sad, beautiful, indignant, wrenching, important book . . . It is an artistic privilege and (I think) almost a moral duty that you all read this"
