The True Story of Hansel and Gretel by Louise Murphy

They were children of a poor woodcutter and had a stepmother who feared of starvation and convinced their father to leave them into deep forests. Originally, “Hansel and Gretel” was a fairy tale of German origin adapted by Giambattista Basile and then later by Brothers Grimm. Transposing from the fairy tale into a parable of a holocaust, “The True Story of Hansel and Gretel” is a brainwork of Louise Murphy who traversed into the lives of Jews at the onslaught of the world war to give heartrending account of their struggle for survival. (Aug.The True Story of Hansel and Gretel Short Summary

No reader who picks up this inspiring novel will put it down until the final pages, in which redemption is not a fairy tale ending but a heartening message of hope. Eventually, the Nazis indulge in wholesale slaughter, and the children barely survive, hiding and on the run. The graphic details-the physical symptoms of near starvation, the infestations of lice, the effects of bitter cold-make it plain that this is the grimmest kind of fable. The naïve siblings are only half-conscious of much of this, though they are perfectly aware of their peril should they be discovered.

This mirror image of the fairy tale is deliberately disorienting, as Murphy describes the horrors of the outside world compared with the haven inside Magda's hut, and the fear and anguish of the other people who conspire to save the children and protect their own families, too. The story alternates between the children's nightmarish adventures, and their parents' struggle for survival and hope for a safe reunion.

In an imaginative reversal of the original tale, they encounter a small woman named Magda, known as a 'witch' by villagers, who risks her life in harboring them. Two Jewish children, a girl of 11 and her seven-year-old brother, are left to wander the woods after their father and stepmother are forced to abandon them, frantically begging them never to say their Jewish names, but to identify themselves as Hansel and Gretel. A provocative transformation of the classic fairy tale into a haunting survival story set in Poland during WWII, Murphy's second novel (after The Sea Within) is darkly enchanting.

The True Story of Hansel and Gretel by Louise Murphy