Tag Archive | Bonnier Books UK

The Phone Box At The Edge Of The World by Laura Imai Messina

Stunningly Beautiful

The Phone Box At The Edge Of The World by Laura Imai Messina is a stunningly beautiful book about grief and love and life. Whilst it is a novel, it has its roots in reality as it is based on the actual phone box at Bell Gardia in Japan.

There is nothing magical about the phone box but it does have healing properties for those who go there. Those who are grief stricken, pick up the phone, talk into it, and the wind carries their messages of hope.

In Bell Gardia faith and hope are alive. People believe there must be more to life than what we can see, feel and hear. In Bell Gardia guilt and fears are put aside as love and hope arise. “When we go up that hill to Suzuki san’s garden, we’re trying to get our shadows back.” People are trying to grab hold of their pasts and bring back hope to their shattered lives.

Many people make the journey to Bell Gardia – those who have lost parents, children, loved ones. “We’re still parents even when our children are no longer here.” As they release their voices to the wind, they are believing they will be heard.

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Always Remember Your Name by Andra and Tatiana Bucci

In Memory Of The Six Million

Always Remember Your Name by Andra and Tatiana Bucci, translated by Ann Goldstein is a powerful true account of the sisters’ survival as children in Auschwitz.

Tatiana was born in 1937 and Andra in 1939 to Catholic Jewish parents in Italy. They entered Auschwitz with their mother on April 4th 1944 and remained their until liberated by the Russian army on January 27th 1945.

The sisters’ story is one of survival. Separated from their mother on arrival, they lived in the kinderblock. To this day they do not know why they were spared the fate of so many children who were sent to the gas chambers on arrival at Auschwitz. They wondered if it was because the Nazis believed them to be twins. “There on the ramp our fate was sealed.” It is impossible for us to imagine the horrors they faced but as young children do, they ‘normalised’ what they saw. “Even the idea of ‘going out through the chimney’ seems normal to us.”

Following Auschwitz the sisters spent time in an orphanage in Prague before entering Lingfield House near London in April 1946. This was a home for Jewish children who had survived. Here the sisters received kindness and home comforts for the first time in years.

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