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“It is finished. The tale is told truthfully, and truth is no heavier, no more beautiful than lies.”

The True Story of Hansel and Gretel: a novel of war and survival by Louise Murphy

October 19, 2025 by bjornsnipe Leave a Comment

Trigger warnings: child mutilation, graphic murder, dismemberment, torture, grievous and graphic depictions of wounds, profanity, graphic descriptions of nudity (including children), graphic depictions of childbirth, gas chambers, mass cremations, talk of rape in general, rape of a child shown on page. In the last few months of the Nazi’s occupation of Poland, two children are abandoned by their father and stepmother to increase the chances of all of them surviving. Left to find safety in the dense Bialowieza Forest, the two, renamed “Hansel” and “Gretel” […]

Filed Under: Fiction, History Tagged With: fairy tale reimagining, Invasion of Poland, Jewish children in the Holocaust, Louise Murphy

bjornsnipe's CBR17 Review No:135 · Genres: Fiction, History · Tags: fairy tale reimagining, Invasion of Poland, Jewish children in the Holocaust, Louise Murphy ·
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