Aron, a young Jewish boy living in Warsaw with his parents and siblings, is the narrator of this brutal yet nuanced novel:
The novel hangs on the delicate tension of that deadpan adolescent voice – never cute, never cloying. Aron’s wryness is always entirely unknowing. He relays his world to us just as he experiences it: He fails at school. His mom complains about everything. His little brother dies. How he feels about any of this is articulated only in the space between his sentences. “The next morning my father told me to get up,” he says, “because it was war and the Germans had invaded.” And with that news, his town slides into hell. (Ron Charles, The Washington Post, 4/28/15)
The Nazis soon occupy Warsaw and Jews are forced into designated areas of the city, crammed into already overcrowded apartments. A wall
