Book description
Ruth Maier was born into a middle-class Jewish family in interwar
Vienna. Following the Anschluss of Austria in March 1938, her world
collapsed. In early 1939, her sister having left for England, Ruth
emigrated to Norway and lived with a family in Lillestrøm, near Oslo.
Although she loved many things about her new country and its people,
Ruth became increasingly isolated until she met a soulmate, Gunvor
Hofmo, who was to become a celebrated poet. When Norway became a Nazi
conquest in April 1940, Ruth's effort to join the rest of her family
in Britain became ever more urgent.
Ruth Maier kept a diary from 1934 until she was deported to
Auschwitz in 1942 at the age of twenty-two. Although she was only in
her teens, she shows a sophisticated understanding of the political
forces shaping Europe. Ruth is lyrical, witty and incisive and
explores universal themes of isolation, identity, love, friendship,
desire and justice. Most of all, she seeks what it means to be a human being.
Ruth Maier was born into a middle-class Jewish family in interwar
Vienna. She emigrated to Norway and was deported to Auschwitz in
November 1942, where she was killed on arrival, aged only twenty-two.
Ruth's diary is a testament to the remarkable writer she could have become.
The diary came to light after the book's editor, Jan Erik Vold,
found sections of the manuscript amongst the papers of Ruth's friend,
the eminent Norwegian poet, Gunvor Hofmo, following her death in 1995.
