New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, (2011) dj. Hardcover first edition - The first book by this author to be published in the US - winner of the August Prize, Swedens most important literary award. "In February 1940, the Nazis established what would become the second-largest Jewish ghetto, in the Polish city of Lodz. The leader they appointed was Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski, a sixty-three-year-old Jewish businessman and orphanage director - and the elusive, authoritarian power sustaining the ghettos very existence. [This] chronicles the tale of his rule over a quarter-million Jews for the next four and a half years. He sought to transform the ghetto into a productive industrial complex and strove to make it - and himself - indispensable to the Nazi regime." A novel which captures the full panorama of human resilience and probes deeply into the nature of evil - and which asks difficult questions: Was Rumkowski a ruthless opportunist or was he a pragmatist who managed to save Jewish lives through his collaboration policies? Translated from the Swedish by Sarah Death. Map of the ghetto. Includes an afterword by the author, a list of the main characters and a glossary. 661 pp. ISBN: 978-0374139643.