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When Hitler comes to power in 1933, a tight-knit group of friends and lovers become hunted outlaws overnight. United in their resistance to the madness and tyranny of Nazism, they flee the country. Dora, passionate and fearless; her lover, the great playwright Ernst Toller; her younger cousin Ruth and Ruth's husband Hans find refuge in London. Here they take awe-inspiring risks in order to continue their work in secret. But England is not the safe-haven they think it is, and a single, chilling act of betrayal will tear them apart.Some seventy years later, Ruth is living out her days in Sydney, making an uneasy peace with the ghosts of her past, and a part of history that has all but been forgotten.'A gripping story of love and betrayal. Dora is the most attractive fictional heroine in a long time.' New Statesman'(Funder's) political and moral intelligence shine even more brightly than in Stasiland; the compassionate but unsentimental truthfulness towards her characters even more moving for being interwoven into a narrative of such complexity.' Raimond Gaita, Books of the Year, The Weekend Australian'A sweeping first novel that cover love and war, friendship and betrayal, and the bonds that define a life. It is a moving and ambitious work.' Ann Patchett