WHEN TIME STOPPED: A MEMOIR OF MY FATHER'S WAR AND WHAT REMAINS by Ariana Neumann

Such a beautifully written story about a family and the secrets contained by WWII. Although a Holocaust story, it is so much more than that - the story of a young Jewish man, Hans, who managed to hide in plain sight in Berlin, perform essential war duties, and survived, but was haunted for the rest of his life over the fate of the rest of his family.

But this isn't just a story about Hans, the father of the author and his war time experiences - it is also about a father and daughter, about her growing up in a family where there was always something that didn't feel quite right, about resolving and coming to terms with the fall out from living and surviving in Europe during those terrible years.

Growing up in a Catholic household in Venezuela and being a curious child, there was never an explanation for her father's nightmares, or for the time she discovered an ID card with her father's face on it, but not his name. Visits back to Czechoslovakia with her father unearthed other secrets and surprises, but at no stage did her father want to go down the 'record it all for posterity' path. It wasn't until he died that amongst his papers there was the beginnings of a memoir. From this she finally began the long investigative and frustrating process of writing the story of her father and his family during the 1930s and 1940s. This becomes her story too, as she uncovers horror, amazing courage of not just Hans and his family, but also of non-Jewish people who helped them, despair everywhere, plus her own emotional processing of everything she learns, and then puts into writing.

Another extraordinary WWII story, written with love, sensitivity, sadness but above all hope, because her father survived and went onto live a joyful and positive life.