the Song of Stork

Fifteen-year-old Yael is on the run. The Jewish girl seeks shelter from the Germans on the farm of the village outcast. Aleksei is mute and solitary, but as the brutal winter advances, he reluctantly takes her in and a delicate relationship develops. As her feelings towards Aleksei change, the war intrudes and Yael is forced to join a Jewish partisan group fighting in the woods. Torn apart and fighting for her life, is Yael's story of love, hope and survival. It is the story of one woman finding a voice as the voices around her are extinguished. 'An elegantly crafted, beautifully written novel about - is a reading experience to savour.' 'At once tightly written and , Collishaw's historical novel is a fable of human endurance in absolute extremity' 'The subtle melody of with its first notes and didn't leave me until the very last ones. Stephen Collishaw takes your hand and leads you into a world of tragic beauty, inspiring strength and delicate kindness in the midst of horror and through this journey he reminds you of the sound of hope.' ' about a Jewish girl abandoned in World War 2 and forced to fend for herself in a landscape crawling with sexual ambiguity and brutal violence. It’s a dark jewel that holds up for examination the proximity of terror and savagery to innocence and love. Yet is Stephan Collishaw warns us how the times we live in might end up: with an oafish peasantry drunk on Brexit chasing children through the woods, just because their parents voted Remain.' ' … of condensed fiction that synthesises the art of a great writer with the knowledge of a keen researcher who has become immersed in the first-hand sources of the period… A book that will go down as one of the classics of the literature of the anti-Nazi partisans in the forests around Vilna during the Holocaust.' The prose is sparse and understated and it which hints at the barbaric events going on in the world without ever displaying them in all their technicolour horror... The writing is .' 'It is a refreshing read that is ... I really loved this book, and is one that I have already been recommending.' 'There are so many beautiful moments in the story, acts of kindness and small mercies that ... he gets under the skin of his characters and brings them fully to life on the page.' 'The Song of the Stork is a beautifully written and about a young girl in Poland during the Second World War… a moving read about an awful period in history, which is in fact 'Collishaw has done a fine job of balancing historical reality with the license of fiction, the grim facts of the holocaust with the poignancy of love, and through all it, he manages to offer