Michèle Sarde’s lively saga mingles creative writing with family memories. It evokes the prickly, centuries-long life of the Jews in Salonica, with their nostalgia for the Spain they left behind. With the breakup of the Ottoman empire, they feel impelled to emigrate once more, this time to Paris. Through the narrator and her mother, we get to know her family as genuine human figures, with fears, snobberies and dreams. Soon, though, they are thrown into the cauldron of the Occupation, fleeing the Vichy police and the Gestapo. Discussed by Returning from Silence translator Rupert Swyer and author Michael.