Author Talk: Shelley Davidow – The Girl with the Violin

Join award-winning author Shelley Davidow at the Sydney Jewish Museum to launch her new book, ‘The Girl with the Violin’.

This book tells a powerful love story in which one woman’s quest for identity and healing also becomes the single way she can honour her grandparents, whose lives were irreversibly shattered by the Holocaust.

It’s 1989 and for a young Jewish-Australian violinist, a scholarship to Berlin is the chance of a lifetime. Germany is on the verge of change as the wall is torn down, and Susanna is swept along by the tumultuous event. Under the careful guidance of Stefan Heinemeyer, her renowned violin teacher and the grandson of a Nazi, she begins a composition in memory of her grandmother, Mirla, who died in the Buchenwald concentration camp during the Second World War, and Susanna is inspired to retrace Mirla’s final footsteps.

It’s a journey that reconnects Susanna to her heritage and propels her musical gift to extraordinary heights. Yet as a forbidden yearning for Stefan begins to unfurl, Susanna’s life is forever changed, and the repercussions will echo through decades and across continents.