It is 1914 in the small German town of Altona, when from the workbench of Johann Blumenthal, master silversmith and a Jew, comes the exquisite music box engraved “For Paul, with love” — a treasure which will become his young son’s last link to his father. 

In London, 1963, the latest owner Lilian Morrison holds it in her hands, forced to ask some world-altering questions. Though the lives in this novel may not be as constant as the silver, the music box forges connections and reconnections between a family fragmented by the two world wars, resisting the division of years and miles, and providing the powerful clues that Lilian, who was adopted as a child, will need to unravel her past. 

In this touching novel, translated from the German original by Alison Layland, Mina Baites takes the reader on a poignant and harrowing journey through Europe and beyond, capturing the gradual encroach of Hitler’s tyranny and the loss of Jewish rights as told through the eyes of one dispersing family. 

The novel is rich with historical context, displaying an educated knowledge of the many challenges the Blumenthals and those like them would have faced, and the grave cautions that must have been taken. While the narrative is ever-conscious of the gulfs that divide them, it at the same time displays a Dickensian way of weaving the characters back together. 

The novel is preoccupied with absent loved ones, recalling them so frequently that they almost seem present, populating the text like ghosts. However, it is not mainly about loss, but inheritance, and the inheritance of so much more than mere objects: of memories, history and identity. It is a moving depiction of a past that we cannot and should not forget, least of all now. 

The second instalment, Dreams of Silver, is scheduled for release in November.