Life With a Star - Jiri Weil

'One of the finest novels of the century.' Independent

Stitched onto the jacket, worn over the heart, according to the rules for all Jews, the star turns Josef Roubicek into an outsider in his own city. Forced to lurk on the edges of Prague, to work as a gravedigger at the cemetery, and to keep off the trams and streets after curfew, he waits for a summons from them. Every day the grinding bureaucracy of evil brings new regulations, along with new lists of names to join the transports.

This remarkable novel traces one Jewish man's struggle to exist in Nazi-occupied Prague. Drawing strength from the smallest of things a lost love, a stray cat, an onion Josef determines to live, and realises that surviving against the odds is the greatest act of resistance.