Seiffert’s prose is not showy, but graceful and precise. The misery of the dank streets is relieved by flashes of light and humanity

A fine novel that locates small, flickering lights of hope in an otherwise desolate landscape

Seiffert’s cool tone never wavers – her spare, beautiful prose is a joy to read

Rachel Seiffert writes short, fast narratives about the big historical events that have shaped our time . . . The primal energy in this novel is a moral sore that will never heal. How could Seiffert’s beloved Opa (grandad) not know what was going on? How, knowing, could he and her Oma not resist? Yet had they resisted, Seiffert would not be here, in 2017, to write for us. One closes this fine novel sensing the confused pain it must have caused Rachel Seiffert to write it

Rachel Seiffert’s new novel A Boy in Winter stretches over only three days, through which you encounter all the emotions of the time, horror and instinct for survival, family loyalty, and above all perhaps, bravery

Without wasting a word, Seiffert follows their journey with an implacable calm, although outrage lurks under the surface of every word

Completely captures those times in a vivid, precise, captivating and terrible way

Spare, elegant and devastating

Rachel Seiffert writes short, fast narratives about historical events that have shaped our time. This latest, unsettling work centres on a small Ukrainian town, weeks after the German invasion in 1941 as the SS round up and murder the Jewish inhabitants. We follow runaway children, a German engineer with doubts about the Nazis, and a young Ukrainian who has to decide whether to collaborate. Moral choices and their consequences are brought to life on the page. The ending is particularly moving

A spellbinding evocation of fear and threat tinged with the possibility of hope and change,

Seiffert’s writing is spare and atmospheric, perfectly paced to achieve the maximum effect of stillness yielding to panic, order giving way to violent disorder and, eventually, winter turning into spring

The power of her writing comes not from emotional manipulation or verbal fireworks but from her marshaling of the sort of visual detail that makes her settings feel almost tangible, and from the bonds she builds between her wary characters . . . with A Boy in Winter, Seiffert has unleashed literature’s unique power to analyze history’s scroll, to let fiction judge

Rachel Seiffert’s tale vividly evokes the Ukrainian landscape and the harrowing experiences of Jews at the hands of the Nazis

This year’s standout novel