'The evening the men came I fled through the garden gate...' The Netherlands, World War II When the Nazis invade the Netherlands in May 1940 it's clear that life is changing for the girl and her family. Step by step, the Nazis close in on the Dutch Jews. But when the authorities finally come to the family home a split decision will have devastating consequences. Marga Minco's autobiographical novel Bitter Herbs is a Dutch classic that has been translated into more than fifteen languages. This deceptively simple and profoundly moving tale is now reissued with a new translation by Jeannette K Ringold.

During the Nazi occupation of Holland Turing World War II, Jewish writer Marga Minco's parents and siblings were deported to concentration camps. None returned. In her first novel, Minco evokes with simplicity and distance her memories from the years during the war: the night her family gathered to sew the cloth stars to their coats that would identify them as Jewish, the day the recruitment order for the work camp came in, and the police raids that emptied whole streets. "Durante la ocupacion nazi de Holanda en la segunda guerra mundial, los padres y los hermanos de la escritora judia Marga Minco fueron deportados a campos de concentracion. Ninguno regreso. En su primera novela Minco evoca con sencillez y distanciamiento sus recuerdos de los anos de la guerra: la noche en que toda la familia se reunio para coser en los abrigos las estrellas de tela que los identificaban como judios, el dia que llego la orden de reclutamiento para el campo de trabajo y las redadas que vaciaban calles enteras. "