Penguin Books Australia

WINNER OF THE 2012 MILES FRANKLIN LITERARY AWARD

When Hitler comes to power in 1933, a tight-knit group of friends and lovers become hunted outlaws overnight.  United in their resistance to the madness and tyranny of Nazism, they flee the country.  Dora, passionate and fearless; her lover, the great playwright Ernst Toller; her younger cousin Ruth and Ruth's husband Hans find refuge in London.  Here they take awe-inspiring risks in order to continue their work in secret.  But England is not the safe-haven they think it is, and a single, chilling act of betrayal will tear them apart.

Some seventy years later, Ruth is living out her days in Sydney, making an uneasy peace with the ghosts of her past, and a part of history that has all but been forgotten.

'A gripping story of love and betrayal.  Dora is the most attractive fictional heroine in a long time.' New Statesman

'[Funder's] political and moral intelligence shine even more brightly than in Stasiland; the compassionate but unsentimental truthfulness towards her characters even more moving for being interwoven into a narrative of such complexity.' Raimond Gaita, Books of the Year, The Weekend Australian

'A sweeping first novel that cover love and war, friendship and betrayal, and the bonds that define a life.  It is a moving and ambitious work.' Ann Patchett

'Spellbinding.  There are echoes of the best espionage tales.' Sunday Telegraph