Book Review: Day After Night

I've read a few of Anita Diamant's other novels-including the Red Tent which I thought was fantastic!! Her most recent novel Day After Night was also amazing. I have always been intrigued with the Holocaust, and I've always wondered what happened to all the people who were in hiding, or in camps, or wherever when the war ended. Day After Night deals with exactly this issue.

The four main characters are all Jewish women who had very different experiences during the war: Shayndel a Polish Zionist considered a hero by many because of her actions during the war, Leonie a French girl who is disgraced by how/where she spent the war (I cant say more without spoiling anything), Tedi a dutch girl who went into hiding, and finally Zorah the only concentration camp survivor among our four main characters.

These women have all survived the Holocaust and find themselves in Atlit Illegal Immigration Detention Camp run by the British-basically a prison for the Jews who were trying to make their way to Palestine and Israel for a chance to live freely and openly in Israel.

I loved the different voices in this novel and thought that Diamant's decision to illustrate the different types of experiences Jewish women could have had during this time was incredibly powerful. While I realized that many Jewish people had no home and nobody to return to once the war was over, I never knew that many sought refuge in Palestine and on the way ended up being detained as illegal immigrants. Day After Night was a very readable novel and I highly recommend it!!