Nocturne (Diane Armstrong, Fourth Estate, $32.99 tpb, ISBN 9780732284305, May) ****

Herself a childhood refugee from WWII Poland, Armstrong is on familiar territory following the author’s earlier explorations of personal identity and the Holocaust. Teenage Elzunia Orlowski reaches womanhood through the deprivations imposed upon her by the Nazi occupation of Warsaw. Her family’s story is interconnected with that of diplomat and Polish patriot Adam Czartoryski, an active member of the Resistance. As the lives of our two protagonists interweave, the whole history of the building, liquidation and Uprising of the Warsaw Ghetto is presented in excruciatingly vivid detail, along with the rarely-written-about Warsaw Uprising of 1944 and the bombing raids of Berlin, Cologne and Dresden. Armstrong’s research is expertly woven into the fabric of a fictional tale, providing an engrossing ‘faction’ of heroism and resilience that will appeal to fans of fictional dramatic/romantic sagas as well as lovers of insightful history. Though perhaps overly ambitious in historical scope and a tad too long, Nocturne nonetheless successfully transports the reader through the astounding travails experienced by the residents of Warsaw. In Armstrong’s own words, this is an elegy to ‘those who enriched the world by their courage’ despite ‘those who besmirched it by their cruelty.’

Scott Whitmont is the owner of Lindfield Bookshop & Lindfield Children’s Bookshop

This review from Australian Bookseller & Publisher magazine is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2008, Thorpe-Bowker

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