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'If I had my time over and got to choose my own ending? I'd choose this one, this disease, with all its lessons and revelations. I'd choose the "me" I've become.' I have endless questions for my father and he answers them all, slowly tapping away at his computer, his words pulsing from the screen. Sometimes he answers questions I haven't yet thought to ask. I have kept every print-out he has given me, and saved each email. The discs on my desk contain the most intense and revealing dialogue I have ever had with my father. He has taught me how to live without uttering a single word.'
Description In 1944, thirteen-year-old Emil Braun cheated death for the first time, when he escaped the clutches of Dr Mengele in a selection queue at Birkenau. In the next three years, and at other concentration camps, he did so time and again, often through the kindness of strangers. Many years later, after making a new life for himself in Australia, Emil and his daughter Suzy face the greatest trial of all. Suzy and her father love each other in the way most fathers and daughters do: they are too lazy to ask questions, too busy to listen, and not curious enough about the people they call family. Now, though, Suzy's father is dying... The Tattooed Flower is the tender and illuminating story of how a father and daughter choose to spend their last years together: Suzy discovering her father's past as a child of the Holocaust; and her father teaching his family, by example, how to live well, love fully, and die without fear or regret. The Tattooed Flower finds hope, love, and beauty in the saddest of places. This is a remarkable, compelling book about life's lessons, and how one man can leave a mark and make a difference. |