Antonio Iturbe

On the black mud of Auschwitz that swallows everything, Fredy Hirsch has secretly set up a school. In a place where books are forbidden, young Dita hides beneath her dress the fragile volumes of the smallest, most hidden and clandestine public library that has ever existed.

Amidst the horror, Dita teaches us a wonderful lesson in courage: she does not give up and never loses her will to live or to read because, even in that terrible extermination camp, ‘opening a book is like boarding a train that takes you on holiday’.

A moving novel based on real events that rescues from oblivion one of the most touching stories of cultural heroism.