SIGNED BOOKPLATE EDITION
 
Ode to Joy: One Boy’s Journey Across War-torn Europe, by Sophie Herxheimer (Author), Sarah Gavron (Author).  Format: Graphic Memoir
 
This extraordinary graphic memoir feels less like a book than a song carried across generations. A vital and startlingly original work, both bleak and beautiful in equal measure. Full of humour, tenderness and daring, it transforms the past into something intimate, alive and profoundly human
 
This is the story of an ordinary little boy, Ib Katznelson, swept up in the cataclysmic tides of fascism, war and propaganda. A generation later, his daughter-in-law, filmmaker Sarah Gavron, inspired by Ib's story, finds artist-poet Sophie Herxheimer to collaborate on telling it in a new, visual form.
 
We follow Ib and his family's attempt to escape Denmark in 1943, and their eventual arrival at Theresienstadt, the 'model' concentration camp. Here the Nazis' horrors were hidden from the world, yet it was also a place where, somehow, art and culture flourished in secret. Satirical cabarets entertained the starving in desolate attics, children made beautiful works of art, huge choirs sang together about death.
 
This epic graphic novel contains all of life, from its darkest moments to its most surprising joys. Inspired by the creativity of the prisoners themselves, Ode to Joy invents a startling and original visual language to tell a story about those who keep hope alive, even in the cruellest of times.