He was caught taking the yellow patch off his clothes and trying to sneak back into the city.

Many books have been written about the experiences of Europe’s Jews during the Second World War, but few stand comparison with this account.

Based on the author’s own experience, as a teenage partisan interned in a concentration camp in his native Bulgaria, this book paints a vivid picture of the harsh realities of the daily routine. A varied cast of characters – ranging from sadistic paramilitaries to skeletal inmates engaged in a grotesque struggle for survival – is brought vividly to life. The style is terse, direct and uncompromising, making no concessions to sentimentality and eschewing conventional literary flourishes. Interspersed in the text there are quotations from various religious sources – Jewish, Christian, and mystical – underlining the author’s belief in the survival of the human spirit in the face of adversity.