The Greater Hope

Ilse Aichinger was born to a Jewish mother in Vienna in 1921. Prior to 1938 her Aunt Klara waited for the family in London, but only Ilse's twin sister, Helga, escaped on the last Kindertransport. Ilse remained. She survived, and published The Greater Hope in 1948. The novel reflects Ilse Aichinger's experience of anti-Semitism as young woman in Nazi Austria, and through her extraordinary use of language the author not only captures the horror and the humanity of that experience, but transcends ...