'Without a doubt, one of the outstanding novels I've read about the fate of a Jew and the Jews under the Nazis. I don't really know of one like it.' Philip Roth 'An astonishing work of fiction . . . Jirí Weil has achieved something staggering, almost unthinkable. His sophisticated, modernist, human imagination has made the dark horror of the Holocaust into an occasion of enlightenment.' New Yorker 'A novel of immense authority and distinction.' Harold Pinter 'Weil relies on small words and simple sentences to capture vast and terrible events . . . painful and enduring.' Sunday Times 'One of the most powerful works to emerge from the Holocaust . . . a fierce and necessary work of art.' New York Times 'A unique and deeply moving book, filled with echoes of Kafka and hints of Kundera and Skvorecky.' Observer Stitched onto the jacket, worn over the heart, according to the rules for all Jews, the star turns Josef Roubicek into an outsider in his own city. Forced to lurk on the edges of Prague, to work as a gravedigger at the cemetery, and to keep off the trams and streets after curfew, he waits for a summons from 'them'. Every day the grinding bureaucracy of evil brings new regulations, along with new lists of names to join the transports. This remarkable novel traces one Jewish man's struggle to exist in Nazi occupied Prague. Drawing strength from the smallest of things – a lost love, a stray cat, an onion – he determines to live, and realises that surviving against the odds is the greatest act of resistance.