Book Summary

Marta dreamed of an extraordinary life: she wanted to conquer the world, she wanted to write. But the Second World War and Holocaust destroyed everything. Marta's Notebooks tells the story of the one thing Marta wrote, decades after the war, when she was hospitalized in a psychiatric ward and suffering from deep depression. A close relationship developed between Marta and her psychiatrist, leading her to write her story: her poignant memoir, an intimate and historical document, is a testimony to a woman's life and a place that was destroyed.

Marta's Notebooks brings together three components: an authentic memoir written by Marta Wollner, a Holocaust survivor; a literary, fictive biography based on this diary; and an auto-fiction novella, the confession of her daughter reflecting on the profound impact of her mother's trauma on her own life. Providing a unique approach to telling a survival story, Marta's Notebooks is a testament to the complex wounds trauma leaves behind.