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Paperback, 140 x 210mm
280 pages
January 2011
Klára Galambos was a twenty-year-old violin student in Budapest in March 1944. Arrested and thrown into jail in the first days after the German occupation, she later managed to get home to Szombathely, was in the ghetto there and transported with the Jews of Szombathely to Auschwitz Birkenau. After five weeks she and her aunt were among the thousand Hungarian women selected for slave labour at Allendorf. They returned to Hungary after the war, and in 1948 they both left Hungary for New Zealand, where Clare joined the fledgling national orchestra. As a long-serving member of the NZSO, she made a significant contribution to the musical life of this country, and is now retired in Wellington.
The Violinist draws on memoir, interviews and historical research to tell a compelling story.
Praise for The Violinist
‘The compelling story of an eventful life.’
—Julia Millen, Listener
‘Sarah Gaitanos has verified the cloud of memory with her stellar research, placing Winter's oral recollections in the context of recorded history. … this is a powerful, galloping read.’
—Cheryl Pearl Sucher, Sunday Star Times
‘… a very honest book, it's incredibly moving, very simply told … a woman of great courage and compassion and strength. It's a really interesting example of how different people, depending on their personalities and circumstances, survived trauma … It's a good story, as well as being a wonderful story.’
—Kate de Goldi, Good Morning, TV One
Sarah Gaitanos is the author of Nola Millar: A Theatrical Life, and with Alan Bollard, Governor of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, of the current bestseller Crisis: One Central Bank Governor and the Global Financial Collapse.
