Two Lives

'A REMARKABLE TRUE STORY... Two Lives has about it a purity of intent and a goodness of heart that are rare in modern literature' CRAIG BROWN, Mail on Sunday Two Lives is the story of a century and of a love affair across a racial divide. It tells of the extraordinary lives of Vikram Seth's great-uncle Shanti, brought up in India and sent to Berlin in the 1930s to study, and of his great-aunt Henny, whose German-Jewish family took Shanti in as a lodger. What follows is an astonishing tapestry of India, the Third Reich and the Second World War, Auschwitz and the Holocaust, Israel and Palestine, post-war Germany and modern Britain. 'TRULY UNFORGETTABLE... He zooms in on tiny details, then broadens his focus to include Nazi Germany, India and Israel, with all the great events of the twentieth century. It is a meditation on love, courage and friendship... and on those acts of spontaneous generosity which are all that is left to maintain faith in humanity' ANTONY BEEVOR, The Times 'EXTRAORDINARY... In Two Lives, we continually intersect with some of the great issues of the twentieth century... A moving and beautifully orchestrated work' EDWARD LUCE, Financial Times 'I cannot remember ever being quite so moved by a memoir... His achievement has exceeded all possible expectations' SIMON WINCHESTER