by Bart van Es
*** WINNER OF THE COSTA BOOK OF THE YEAR 2018 ***
WINNER OF THE SLIGHTLY FOXED BEST FIRST BIOGRAPHY PRIZE 2018
Penguin presents the audiobook edition of The Cut Out Girl written and read by Bart van Es.
'A masterpiece of history and memoir' Evening Standard
'Superb. This is a necessary book - painful, harrowing, tragic, but also uplifting' The Times
Little Lien wasn't taken from her Jewish parents - she was given away in the hope that she might be saved. Hidden and raised by a foster family in Amsterdam during the Nazi occupation, she survived the war only to find that her real parents had not. Much later, she fell out with her foster family, and Bart van Es - the grandson of Lien's foster parents - knew he needed to find out why.
His account of tracing Lien and telling her story is a searing exploration of two lives and two families. It is a story about love and misunderstanding and about the ways that our most painful experiences - so crucial in defining us - can also be redefined.
'Luminous, elegant, haunting - I read it straight through' Philippe Sands, author of East West Street
'Deeply moving. Writes with an almost Sebaldian simplicity and understatement' Guardian
'Remarkable, deeply moving' Penelope Lively
*** WINNER OF THE COSTA BOOK OF THE YEAR 2018 ***
WINNER OF THE SLIGHTLY FOXED BEST FIRST BIOGRAPHY PRIZE 2018
Penguin presents the audiobook edition of The Cut Out Girl written and read by Bart van Es.
'A masterpiece of history and memoir' Evening Standard
'Superb. This is a necessary book - painful, harrowing, tragic, but also uplifting' The Times
Little Lien wasn't taken from her Jewish parents - she was given away in the hope that she might be saved. Hidden and raised by a foster family in Amsterdam during the Nazi occupation, she survived the war only to find that her real parents had not. Much later, she fell out with her foster family, and Bart van Es - the grandson of Lien's foster parents - knew he needed to find out why.
His account of tracing Lien and telling her story is a searing exploration of two lives and two families. It is a story about love and misunderstanding and about the ways that our most painful experiences - so crucial in defining us - can also be redefined.
'Luminous, elegant, haunting - I read it straight through' Philippe Sands, author of East West Street
'Deeply moving. Writes with an almost Sebaldian simplicity and understatement' Guardian
'Remarkable, deeply moving' Penelope Lively
Reviews-
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June 11, 2018
Literature professor van Es (Shakespeare in Company) thoughtfully examines a dark chapter in the Netherlands’ past in this look at the life of Lien de Jong, a Dutch Jew who was hidden from the Nazis by van Es’s grandparents before a rift developed between Lien and them. Van Es’s account is based both on interviews with Lien, whom he met when she was in her 80s, and his reconstruction of events. A year after Holland was invaded by Germany in 1940, Jews were barred from using public places such as parks, libraries, and museums. In 1942, when Jews were required to wear a yellow star to identify themselves, and with the then-eight-year-old Lien the target of other children’s increasing anti-Semitism, her mother took the desperate step of putting her into an underground network of foster families, who placed her with van Es’s grandparents, Jan and Henk. Van Es makes Lien’s childhood palpable by including photographs, excerpts from a poetry scrapbook she’d kept, and the poignant letter her mother wrote to her protectors (“Most Honored Sir and Madam, Although you are unknown to me, I imagine you for myself as a man and a woman who will, as a father and mother, care for my only child”). He also uncovers long-buried secrets relating to the rift between Lien and his grandparents, which was still unhealed when Jan and Henk died. This is a nuanced, moving, and unusual “hidden child” account. - Evening Standard Astonishing. Van Es has created a masterpiece of history and memoir, concluding on a note of reconciliation, hope and great love
- Sunday Times Deeply moving, this is a remarkable memoir
- Irish Times Powerful . . . extraordinary
- Sunday Mirror Brought to life with family photographs and diary entries that add further impact to Lien's harrowing memories and testimony - this deeply affecting and fascinating story is guaranteed to haunt you
- Penelope Lively Remarkable - the story of one traumatic childhood, deeply moving, and told with great dexterity, allowing the wisdoms of today to run parallel with the absorbing narrative of wartime events
- Publishers Weekly A nuanced, moving, and unusual "hidden child" account
- The Times Book of the Week Superb. This is a necessary book - painful, harrowing, tragic, but also uplifting
- Judges of the Costa Book of the Year Prize 2018 Sensational and gripping . . . shedding light on some of the most urgent issues of our time
- Philippe Sands, Author of East West Street Luminous, elegant, haunting - I read it straight through
- Georgia Hunter, author of We Were the Lucky Ones An awe-inspiring account of the tragedies and triumphs within the world of the Holocaust's "hide-away" children, and of the families who sheltered them
- Irish Times A moving story of personal and family history, with a scholar's objective eye for the bigger picture.
- Daily Express Harrowing . . . profoundly moving
