Limmud NZ 2021

Catherine Chidgey’s latest novel, set in Buchenwald concentration camp, explores our capacity for willful blindness via the story of a part-Jewish doctor forced to treat an SS officer’s wife for cancer. ‘With its multiple registers and complex view of humanity,’ writes Publishers Weekly (USA), ‘this marks a vital turn in Holocaust literature.’ The Times (UK) has just chosen it as one of the best historical novels of 2021 so far. In this session, Catherine will talk about and read from Remote Sympathy, and will discuss the challenge of researching such a complex story. Remote Sympathy was shortlisted for the fiction prize at the Ockham New Zealand book awards and has been a bestseller since its release.