Shadow and the Flame

An urgent history – intimate in its telling, epic in its scope – of the argument that shaped the postwar world: how to define and remember the Holocaust.‘Extraordinary and profoundly moving. The Shadow and the Flame is essential reading’ EDMUND DE WAAL‘Absolutely superb. An important and hitherto untold story which is more relevant now than ever’ BART VAN ESThe end of the Second World War marked the end of the attempted extermination of the Jewish people. Stunned by grief, survivors faced the task of not only forging new lives but of shaping how this cataclysm might be remembered by future generations.This magisterial work of history shines a light on the fierce debate that ensued. For the first time, James McAuley takes us into the minds and hearts of the individuals – some well known, like Hannah Arendt, Salo Baron and Elie Wiesel, others forgotten – who reckoned with this atrocity. From Paris to New York, from the desecrated ghettos of Poland to the fledgling kibbutzim of Israel, The Shadow and the Flame reveals how the event that gradually came to be called the Holocaust made an uneasy transition into memory – involving a debate that, far from being neatly resolved, weighs all too heavily upon the present.Bold, learned and infused with the energy and emotion of its principals, The Shadow and the Flame is the dramatic, momentous account of crafting history in real time. ‘Compelling, relevant to our times, and beautifully written’ SIMON KUPER‘Reminds us that the creation of public memory is never accidental, and never permanent’ ANNE APPLEBAUM‘A stunning, deeply humane book’ CLARISSA WARD‘Magnificent ... represents a milestone in Holocaust literature’ DANIEL MENDELSOHN