
My Innocent Absence
When five-year-old Mirian boards the Serpia Pinto in 1941, she is unaware that she and her mother Kate are escaping the round-ups, separations and extermination camps of Nazi Germany. By the age of 12, Miriam has fled two wars and lived in three continents. Gradually understanding her own history, she begins to train as a doctor at the tender age of 16 and eventually returns to Europe, where she settles in London and marries a German artist, former assistant to Oscar Kokoschka. An elegantly written memoir of a truly fascinating life.
‘Frank reviews the period with a fresh eye. This is truly a new story …’ Independent
‘Her voyages, spelt out in her new memoirs, have nothing to do with the Paul Theroux school of travel writing … They became the real life characters at Rick’s Café in Casablanca' Camden New Journal
‘A dramatic and quite gripping autobiography' Buenos Aires Herald
‘My Innocent Absence, full of lovely, tactile detail, is the story of a peripatetic life’ Jewish Quarterly
'Miriam Frank's history-enforced peregrinations are extraordinary, but much more extraordinary yet is the inner struggle, the quality of the quest and her enquiry into human behaviour.' Kapka Kassabova
‘I found it atmospheric and, most important, I wanted to read more’ Carmen Callil