Patrick Gale: A Place Called Winter Eva Schloss: After Auschwitz: A Story of Heartbreak and Survival by the Stepsister of Anne Frank

PATRICK Gale’s latest novel is based partly on his own family history, the story of his great-grandfather who left his wife and young child behind in England in 1907 and set out alone to establish a homestead in Canada.

Why he left, Gale explained, has always been a family mystery, and it seemed perfectly possible to the writer that he might have been secretly gay.

“Suppression,” he said, “can give rise to monsters,” and in acknowledging that, his new book is full of them. He also wanted to show male and female friendship in marriage, which he feels isn’t written about enough. Gale’s certainly experienced enough now to do his great-grandfather’s bravery in setting out alone justice, something he might not have been able to do when he was younger.

Family reared its head in the most tragic way, too, as the remarkable Eva Schloss recalled the loss of her father and brother during the Holocaust, and also the very real problem she had afterwards as a survivor, whose mother married Otto Frank, that father of Anne. Both Otto and her mother became obsessed with the daughter who wasn’t there, to the detriment of the daughter who was. Schloss admitted feelings of hate towards the Germans after she was liberated from Auschwitz, and feelings of jealousy towards the absent Anne. “I was a person in my own right, with my own story, but always I was introduced as the stepsister of Anne Frank.” It was the remarkable Otto who helped her overcome those feelings, she said, but she wishes her family had talked about their imprisonment more. Perhaps foregrounding Anne the way they did, was their way of speaking about the unspeakable.