A review by arw1g10
A Garden of Eden in Hell: The Life of Alice Herz-Sommer by Melissa Müller

4.0

The book was not what I had expected but I enjoyed it very much. If you're looking for a piece of Holocaust text then this would be the wrong choice however if you are interested in music and its very real power over the human soul then this is the book for you. It follows the life of the talented pianist Alice Herz-Sommer and, though not till substantially through the book, her and her families lives in occupied czechoslovakia and later in Theresienstadt. Musical explanations are accompanied by snippets of the individuals lives whom Alice's music touched. Furthermore, the book encompasses Alice's entire life, the impact her incarceration had upon her and her son, her reaction to the news of her husband's death in Dachau and the new life she built for herself in Palestine giving a wonderfully full picture of a life that both existed within, and survived, the nazi regime and the final solution.