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Testament
- Shortlisted for Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award
- Narrated by: Deryn Edwards
- Length: 12 hrs and 59 mins
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Testament
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Summary
Winner of the Bath Novel Award.
Eva finds the letter in the Blue Room. She spent the happier days of her childhood here, in her grandfather's painting studio. After his death, she is responsible for his legacy - a legacy threatened by the letter. It is from the Jewish Museum in Berlin.
They have found the testimony he gave after surviving the death march across Serbia and Hungary, and they want to exhibit it. But the famous Joseph Silk - who came to England as a refugee - remade himself long ago.
As Eva unravels what happened to him and to the woman he loved, she is confronted by the lies that have haunted her family. They will change her grandfather's identity, but they could also turn the tide of history. Their story is in her hands.
Kim Sherwood's extraordinary first novel is a powerful statement of intent. Beautifully written, moving and hopeful, it crosses the tidemark where the third generation meets the first, finding a new language to express love, loss and our place within history.
Critic reviews
"What a writer. I was totally captivated. Moving and ultimately uplifting." (Heather Morris, author of The Tattooist of Auschwitz)
"I am absorbed by the delicacy, even the beauty, with which she writes of the trauma of history." (Amit Chaudhuri)
What listeners say about Testament
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- a fine
- 01-12-18
Stunning, upsetting, well researched and utterly brilliant!
I really couldn’t stop listening to this. so moving, and overall well read. But I did find the caricature German accent, zis and zat etc quite annoying.
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2 people found this helpful
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- J. Wexler
- 03-12-21
Unsatisfying. The big revel that wasn't.
So...I have experience with the holocaust. I am 63, jewish and my family was ravaged and eliminated in Europe. I grew up with people with tattoos. I have met people unimaginably scarred by their experiences. While the actual holocaust recounting is really quite excellent, the young womans journey of "discovery" and the constant "shock" at people lying about their past, was pretty poorly done.
Many survivors wont talk. They don't want to talk and may refuse to talk. Nor do they want to continually remember and reexperience what they survived.
The protagonists continuous discovery of this isnt shocking, what is shocking is her cluelessness. The phenomenon of denial by people who have been traumatised isn't exactly unusual in daily life, let alone in relationship to the extraordinary.
The book is written as if there is going to be some big reveal. There is none. Just pain, suffering, dysfunctionality and depression.
If the story had been told, without the pretense of cluelessness and the buildup to nothing...that would be the typical experience of the children of survivors.
My uncle told NO ONE about his experience. He told NO ONE how he lost his leg. I have been estranged from that branch of the family most of my life. His daughter asked that I attend his 80th birthday party. My uncle and I had a particular bond of country of origin, that the rest of his family lacked. At his party he was surprised and pleased to see me. Ignoring everyone else in the room, he told me his story. When he was done, I rose and found his daughters crying...why, he had never told them of his death march and being locked in a leiterwagon and machine gunned, and of having his leg removed on a train station platform by the Russians.
This is not unusual. People hide shame and pain and suffering from those they love.
The child certainly, and a grand child likely, would have understood this from the get-go.
The shocking reveal? That she was so clueless.
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4 people found this helpful