Let us begin with your latest novel, Max in the House of Spies. How did you end up creating this character called Max and the kind of fictional universe that he is part of?
I have known for a long time that I wanted to write about Kindertransport, which was an effort to get Jewish children out of Nazi Germany in 1938 and 1939. A close friend of my family — a brilliant music critic named Michael Steinberg — was one of the children on the Kindertransport. He was taken away from his mother in 1938 to England, where he lived for eight years not knowing whether she had survived the war. I knew the story and what an amazing thing it was but didn’t know how to tell it in a way that was fun for children. Engaging with a serious subject in a fun way is crucial. If children do not want to turn the pages, what is the point of me writing anything difficult or complex? They will never see it.
Unrelated to this, I was also reading the spy novels of John Le Carré and fell in love with them. They are beautiful works of literature set in the world of espionage. I was really inspired by them but did not make the connection with my own writing until COVID-19 hit. I was in quarantine in March, April and May of 2020, observing how the discourse in the United States was dominated by lies. Our President — Donald Trump — told people to inject bleach into their veins. People died. I wanted to explore the question, “How could a country become devoted to lies?” And the most obvious place to start was Nazi Germany.
That’s how Michael Steinberg, John Le Carré and the lies being spread during the pandemic came together for me. I had a story, a reason, and a method, so I sat and wrote the book.
Did it feel like you were also honouring your ancestors by writing this book?
Yes, absolutely! Many people from my extended family were killed in the Holocaust. While that was on my mind, I also thought about the fact that there are so many books about non-Jewish heroes saving Jewish people, or about Jewish people who just are victims. I really wanted to write a novel about a Jewish boy who was a hero — a strong, resourceful person who figured things out. There are millions of true stories about Jewish people being heroes during World War II and the Holocaust but they do not tend to be told.