When The World Was Ours
A book about finding hope in the darkest of times
by Liz Kessler
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Pub Date Mar 01 2021 | Archive Date Nov 08 2020
Simon & Schuster Australia | Simon & Schuster Children's UK
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Description
‘An exceptional read’ The Sunday Times
‘Vital glimmers of hope enlighten this profoundly poignant book’ Guardian
A powerful and heart-breaking novel about three childhood friends living during the Second World War whose fates are closely intertwined, even when their lives take very different courses. Inspired by a true story, this is the perfect read for fans of The Book Thief and Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl.
Vienna, 1936.
Elsa, Leo and Max have always been best friends, a special team of three. Then the Nazis come.
As a growing darkness descends around them, Leo and Elsa run for their lives, taking two very different paths across Europe. And Max, once their closest friend, now becomes the enemy as he is drawn into the Hitler Youth. Will the friends ever find their way back to each other? Will they want to?
Inspired by a true story, WHEN THE WORLD WAS OURS is an extraordinary novel that is as powerful as it is heartbreaking, and shows how the bonds of love, family and friendship allow glimmers of hope to flourish, even in the most hopeless of times.
Three friends. Two sides. One memory.
Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9781471196805 |
| PRICE | £12.99 (GBP) |
| PAGES | 320 |
Links
Featured Reviews
Rebecca B, Reviewer
Leo, Elsa and Max, three best friends living in Vienna. They experience one of those rare ‘perfect days’ celebrating Leo’s 9th birthday…and then the world as they know it changes, and friends become enemies. Leo and Elsa are Jews and Max is not.
The book follows these three characters on their separate, very different journeys through the years from 1936 to 1945.
I won’t give too much away, but the idea from this story came from the authors own grandfather. He is the Leo in this story, and the chance encounter he had with a visiting English couple in Vienna turned out to change the course of his life.
This book is heartbreaking, so be prepared. It is a story of the holocaust, and all of the horrors that surround that time in our history. Not everything is explicitly explained, such as what happens to the Jews told to go to the left at Auschwitz, or what exactly Elsa’s friend Greta has to do, to get the extra food from the Nazi officers, but it’s all there.
We get to see both sides in this book. What is was to be Jewish, but also what it was to be a young German boy who grew up with one wish; to be part of the Hitler Youth. Impossible to understand in hindsight, but how much did these young men really know about what being a Nazi soldier meant, in practice.
All of the darkness and sadness aside, this is also a story about family, hope and the memories of perfect days that keep us going, when the world is falling apart.
