In all European countries, the war was still very close and very emotional.

With ex-Nazi’s fleeing to South America, many of those who survived the concentration camps found they were unwanted by America and Britain and tried to make it to Palestine. When Raphael Lemkin fought to have the concept of genocide accepted legally, while it was first used (although not in legal existence) at the Neuremberg trials that year. It was a time of upheaval, conflict, movement and, yet, optimism (as well as changes in fashion and music, Thomas Mann releases “Doctor Faustus” and George Orwell is hidden away writing “1984”). As America offered to provide support to a Europe left with bombed cities and displaced people, the Soviet Union prevented Eastern Europe from receiving aid, widening the division between East and West. It could also no longer provide support to Iran, Turkey and Greece to hold off Soviet Intervention directly leading to America having to step up and take over Britain’s role. The Cold War was beginning, a battered England threw up its hands and abandoned both Palestine and India, leaving Palestine to become someone else’s problem, and leading to the partition of India. In 1947 the war may have finished, but Europe was in turmoil. Although the book has a worldwide perspective, it is Eurocentric and takes a cast of characters (some you will have heard of, such as Christian Dior, Primo Levi and Simone de Beuvoir, while others are less well known, such as Raphael Lemkin) through the events of a traumatic and compelling period of history. Yes, the year is split by months, but, while it is certainly factual, it is also full of poetic writing and is also quite personal at times. Rather than taking a year and giving a full account of what happened during it, this book is something slightly different.

Elisabeth asbrink 1947