Suzanne Leal

But for example, saying something I would take at face value.

For example, he'd say, we had wonderful desserts in Theresienstadt.

And I'd say, oh, that's great.

And he said, I'm joking.

We had no desserts at all.

And what that would do would take from the horror of the earlier tale he told me, would give a rest to me, make me realize just how little I knew and how I hadn't been there.

And then we could move on.

And I think Rachel Seaford in her work, and I'm referring to The Dark Room and her more recent book, A Boy in Winter, she examines the war and she examines it without any sentimentality.

Her writing is sort of Cormac McCarthy sparse.

She's a German, English author, but with an Australian father.

Her late father was Australian.

And her mother came from a family who...

were members of the Nazi party, if not actively involved during the war.

So she comes straddling two worlds, which I think makes her a very careful and a very perceptive writer.

And what I love, and I've always loved Rachel Seaford's writing, is her ability, even in the midst of horror, to hold back, to hold back, and in that way to give the reader air.

Okay, look, I don't know if enjoyed's the word, but what I've been reading for, I'm in a French book club and we chose, of course, The Plague by Albert Camus, which was in keeping with these corona times.

And look, I'm sure a lot of people know about this book, but it's...

It was published in 1947.

It's about a plague that sweeps through a French Algerian city, a city called Oran, and it's really a bubonic plague.

So thousands of rats have died in the street and the disease, the plague, spreads to the human population and we watch how the various characters react to this.