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<p/><br></br><p><b> About the Book </b></p></br></br>This unsparing portrait of a childhood in 1939 Hungary--told in the voice of a brave and unforgettable nine-year-old Jewish girl--is "the best sort of memoir, revealing not only a compelling story, but also the bruised yet still bold self which bears the weight of its story in memory" ("The New York Times Book Review"). <p/><br></br><p><b> Book Synopsis </b></p></br></br><p>I begged, and often my brother obliged. In the dark of night, when I couldn't sleep, Ivan told me fairy tales in a whisper. All the stories began, in the traditional Hungarian manner, `Once there was / where there wasn't / there was once a Castle / that twirled on the foot of a duck.'</p><p>There are few female figures in literature as riveting as the precocious nine-year-old Magda Denes who narrates this story. Her stubborn self-command and irrepressible awareness of the absurd make her, in her mother's eyes, impossibly sarcastic, bigmouthed, insolent, and far too smart for her own good. When her family goes into hiding from the fascist Arrow-Cross, she is torn from the castle of intimacies shared with her adored and adoring older brother and plunged into a world of incomprehensible deprivation, separation, and loss. Her rage, and her ability to feel devastating sorrow and still insist on life, will reach every reader at the core.</p>

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