The World That We Knew
Award History
| Award | Year | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Dayton Literary Peace Prize – Fiction | 2020 | Winner |
About This Book
Berlin, 1941. Hanni Kohn creates a golem to protect her twelve-year-old daughter Lea on the dangerous journey through occupied France to safety. The golem, named Ava, is bound by laws that constrain the living—but Ava comes to feel love herself. A novel of the Holocaust told through the lens of Jewish mysticism, following three women across the landscapes of wartime Europe.
About the Author
Alice Hoffman is an American author who has published more than thirty novels and story collections over a career spanning nearly fifty years. Born in New York City in 1952, she studied at Adelphi University and received an MFA from Stanford University. Her fiction seamlessly blends realism with magical and fairy-tale elements, creating a distinctive form of literary magical realism set primarily in New England. Read more →
