John Boyne

The Piano Teacher of Montparnasse is from Heather Morris, whose 2012 novel The Tattooist of Auschwitz began the vogue for the trivial and insidious ‘Holocaust’ novels so beloved by reading groups. There are questions at the end of this one, including: ‘What was your overwhelming feeling when finishing the novel? Was it one of hope?’ Really? These are not Holocaust novels, of course: if they were, book clubs would not want them. Holocaust novels are about death, and Morris, who writes with singsong vapidity, takes rescue and survival as her subject. Survival tales are soothing, though not representative if you understand that 90 per cent of Polish Jews were murdered. They expiate non-Jews from the truth that they colluded in the slaughter.

Israel would not have been born when it was – 1948 – without Hitler’s genocidal war on European Jewry. Dispossessed Jews had to be provided with a home. In the rush to establish a Jewish state in Palestine, safeguarding Arab nationalism was not the most pressing concern. Israel’s foundation thus marked a turning point in the fortunes of the world more grievous than anyone could have anticipated. Most European nations supported Israel during the Arab-Israeli war of June 1967, when President Nasser of Egypt moved his troops into Sinai on the Israeli border and, as part of a violent pan-Arabist ideology, vowed to eliminate Jews (and Christians).