Irena's Gift

Praise for Irena’s Gift

“Irena’s Gift: An Epic WWII Memoir of Sisters, Secrets, and Survival chronicles Kirsten’s remarkable, decade-long quest to understand and heal the transgenerational trauma of war on her family. Using historical accounts, interviews and extensive archival research, Kirsten movingly reconstructs scenes of violence and heroism in the lives of everyday people, most notably the extraordinary women who came before her. After years of emotionally intense research reconstructing her mother’s and grandparents’ past, Kirsten takes Joasia to Poland to uncover the origins of their pain. Pain sometimes travels through families until someone is ready to feel it. This memoir is the result of Kirsten’s journey to break open the seal of suffering and rebuild her family’s Jewish identity after decades of silence. Irena’s Gift is a beautifully written testimony to the power of memoir to heal and recreate a family’s history.” —BookPage

“Irena’s Gift interrogates the messy complexity of family, both its tenderness and nurture but also its corrosive anger and rejection. It’s a disturbing investigation into the power of secrets to harm and to haunt.” —Geraldine Brooks, New York Times bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize winner

“Karen Kirsten proves family stories and densities of human affection, when they ran up against that calamity we call the Holocaust, are as individual as fingerprints. News withheld, and what is passed on in doubt and affections, is always dramatic if it can be creatively depicted, and Karen Kirsten more than fulfils that task of narration and enchantment here.” ―Thomas Keneally, Booker Prize-winning author of Schindler’s List

“Deeply moving and beautifully written, Irena’s Gift is a powerful unravelling of mysteries and memory. The journey of reconstruction and reconnection brilliantly evokes a lost era full of pain and love, as well as laying out the intricacies of intergenerational trauma. In addition to its value as Holocaust history, Irena’s Gift deserves to become a classic of the memoir genre.” ―Lucy Adlington, author of The Dressmakers of Auschwitz

“Karen Kirsten’s debut is a harrowing family drama that spans the globe ― from Jewish ghettos patrolled by Nazis to Melbourne suburbs of poodles, kookaburras, and refugees. Kirsten goes on a quest to piece together her family’s secrets and finds much more than a tale of survival from history’s nightmare. She tells a story of disillusionment and faith. She reminds us that sometimes heroes can be repulsive, and sometimes lies keep families together. Irena’s Gift is beautifully written, deeply researched and deeply felt.” ―Kevin Birmingham, New York Times bestselling author of The Sinner and the Saint

“This is one of the best second-generation Holocaust books ever published. I loved it and couldn’t put it down.” ―Ariana Neumann, New York Times bestselling author of When Time Stopped

“An extraordinary story of how secrets and lies can tear a family apart.” ―Maya Lee, author of The Nazis Knew My Name

“In Irena’s Gift, Kirsten brings to life the true and remarkable story of her family, including her mother and her grandmother, who like my Opa, sabotaged munitions at an armaments factory. This is a story of extraordinary women, survival and sacrifice. A must read.” ―Tara Moss, human rights and disability advocate, and author of The War Widow and The Ghosts of Paris