Shura tells the true story of a Jewish woman born in Lithuania at the beginning of the Great War. As a teenager she uncovers a secret that sets her on a life-altering course.
Already a wife and mother when World War II arrives, she struggles to survive as persecution intensifies. She leaps from a train bound for Majdanek, a Nazi extermination camp, hides in the Belarusian woods, and endures the rest of the war with the Bielski resistance-the same partisan group later depicted in the 2008 film Defiance (starring Daniel Craig).
Against the odds she survives and rebuilds a life in Mexico under the name Shura.
Lyrical and intimate in tone, the novel centers on the day-to-day resilience of its protagonist and examines how memory, longing, and the traces of love shape a life lived across exile and loss.
Shura is a translated and revised edition of Una Amapola Entre Cactus, originally published in Mexico in 2012.