‘Magnificent. Complex, wise, unsentimental and very moving’Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’Dense, lyrical and deeply unsettling’New York Times’A fine balance between poetic tenderness and an unflinching account of the brutal realities of the day’Guardian’Extraordinarily original’Los Angeles Times’The prose is stunning, thanks to a masterful translation by Klara Glowczewska, and the characters are so fully fleshed that they seem to step off the page’NPR’Grips the reader with the power of a high-class thriller’Frankfurter Rundschau’All at once she thought that a life is only that which has passed. There is no life other than memory’In the Nazi-occupied Warsaw of 1943, Irma Seidenman, a young Jewish widow, possesses two attributes that can spell the difference between life and death: blue eyes and blond hair. Paired with false papers, she passes as the wife of a Polish officer, until one day an informer spots her on the street.At times a dark lament, at others a sly and sardonic thriller, The Beautiful Mrs. Seidenman is the story of the thirty-six hours that follow Irma’s arrest and the events that lead to her dramatic rescue.