Kirsty Manning

A very engaging book about a modern Australian girl who is connected through family to a photo album secretly added to the number of albums demanded by Nazi leaders at an Austrian concentration camp. Horrific photos that added to the Nuremberg Trial evidence that convicted some of those in control of the system. The story alternates between a view of events in 1944-45 and current times with the young woman trying to come to terms with the history and what her Grandfather wanted of her and for the album.… (meer)

Two main time frames. Mauthausen concentration camp 1940s to 1945. and Australia, New South Wales 1985 to 2017. Hannah's grandfather Nico pays his final visit to his daughter Rosa and brings with him a book which Hannah barely glimpses. It contains photos of prisoners of war in the concentration camp. Rosa hides it away but Nico promises that one day Hannah will be old enough to look at it.

So the story tells how this book of photos came to be created at the same time as telling the story of Hannah's life over a period of 30 years. Initially Rosa resists giving Hannah the book, but it becomes an obsession with Hannah.

In a sense it is not really crime fiction although crimes are committed. There is plenty of mystery though.

At times I became impatient with the narrative but there can be no doubt that the story is carefully and sensitively told.

In the Acknowledgements at the end the author says she wanted to talk about how the clandestine photos of Mauthausen were used to convict Nazi war criminals. She took some facts and used them to create a fictional scenario, with fictional characters describing how a secret photo album has come to be on display in the Sydney Jewish museum.

A very readable story.… (meer)