List

By Martin Fletcher

Book Overview

Martin Fletcher has captivated television audiences for thirty-five years as a foreign correspondent for NBC News. Now, Fletcher combines his own family's history with meticulous research in this gripping story of a young Jewish family struggling to stay afloat after World War II. London, October 1945. Austrian refugees Georg and Edith await the birth of their first child. Yet how can they celebrate when almost every day brings news of another relative or friend murdered in the Holocaust? Their struggle to rebuild their lives is further threatened by growing anti-Semitism in London's streets; Englishmen want to take homes and jobs from Jewish refugees and give them to returning servicemen. Edith's father is believed to have survived, and finding him rests on Georg's shoulders. Then Georg learns of a plot by Palestinian Jews to assassinate Britain's foreign minister. Georg must try to stop the murder, all the while navigating a city that wants to "eject the aliens." In The List, Fletcher investigates an ignored and painful chapter in London's history. The novel is both a breathless thriller of postwar sabotage and a heartrending and historically accurate portrait of an almost forgotten era. In this sensitive, deeply touching, and impossible-to-forget story, Martin Fletcher explores the themes of hope, prejudice, loss and love that make up the lives of all refugees everywhere.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1250012848
• ISBN13: 9781250012845
• Release Date: October 2012
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
• Length: 339 Pages
• Weight: 0.72 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.4" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

Worth a read

I can truthfully say that it wasn't the best book I've ever read, but it certainly was worth reading. Even though I'd put The List down for several days without reading it, the story and characters stuck in my mind. Then I'd pick it up again and be immersed in the world of Jewish refugees from the Holocaust. Perhaps I always simply thought that once the Jews were rescued from the death camps, their problems were over. There! That's done. Now let's move on. The thought that maybe their hell just continued in another form - persistent antisemitism in their new rescuing country, nightmares of events in the camps that tortured them, searching endlessly for any sign, any word, of the existence of a beloved relative who might have survived the camps - never entered my mind until I read The List. And I was incensed by the British trying to keep the Jews out of Palestine, out of their homeland. Even now, a couple of months later as I write this, tears come to my eyes for the strength and courage of the characters of The List (who, I suspect, were closely related to the author). Maybe it WAS the best book I've ever read. It certainly continues to haunt me.