Testament

'Captivating' Heather Morris 'Beautiful' Andrew Miller 'Hugely poignant' Independent 'Moving' Sunday Times

Longlisted for the Desmond Elliot Prize Winner of the Bath Novel Award Winner of the Harpers Bazaar Big Book of the Year Shortlisted for the Best First Novel Award

Of everyone in her complicated family, Eva was always closest to her grandfather. She is making a film about his life. She is with him when he dies.

It is only when she finds the letter from the Jewish Museum in Berlin, hidden in his painting studio, that she realises how many secrets he kept.

As she uncovers everything he endured in the Holocaust - and what it took to learn to live again - Eva is confronted by the lies that haunt her family, and a truth that changes her own identity.

Kim Sherwood's hope-filled first novel is a powerful portrait of survival echoing through the generations; a testament of love, legacy, and all the important questions we leave unasked.

“Testament is a masterfully composed and ambitious novel that really grips its reader - intense, full of hard-researched detail and vivid, original language. It is a remarkable first book that avoids the trap of many Holocaust books by understanding the idea of responsibility beyond the original trauma.”

Achingly powerful, Sherwood's impossibly beautiful prose captivated me from first page to last. Testament tells a fractured history as if it were an intimate memory. A work I won't soon forget - Guy Gunaratne, Booker-prize longlisted author of In Our Mad and Furious City

Powerful and moving . . . Hugely poignant, beautifully written - Independent

An extraordinary book; sad but optimistic, that enshrines the human spirit.I was so moved by the way it shows blessed creativity thriving even in the depths of hell - Patrick Gale

What a writer. I was totally captivated. A compelling, moving and ultimately uplifting story that delivered on its promise to fill the void left by loss. - Heather Morris, author of The Tattooist of Auschwitz

Elegant and highly effective. This novel explores big ideas - some of the biggest ideas there are - but its power as a work of fiction lies in the personal . . . Sherwood pulls the threads of her narrative together with great skill to deliver a sad and beautiful book. - Irish Times

An extraordinary book; sad but optimistic, that enshrines the human spirit.I was so moved by the way it shows blessed creativity thriving even in the depths of hell - Patrick Gale

I am absorbed by the delicacy, even the beauty, with which she writes of the trauma of history . . . It's a real pleasure to see Sherwood approaching this theme - to do with how we discover, read, and reread our past - with subtlety, playfulness, and elegiac sadness. - Amit Chaudhuri, Best Books of 2017, Open Magazine

This ambitious debut novel sensitively grapples [with] the effects of trauma through the generations - Literary Review

Kim Sherwood was born in Camden in 1989 and lives in Bath. She studied Creative Writing at UEA and is now Senior Lecturer at the University of the West of England. Her pieces have appeared in Mslexia, Lighthouse, and Going Down Swinging. Kim began researching and writing Testament, her first novel, after her grandfather, the actor George Baker, passed away and her grandmother began to talk about her experiences as a Holocaust Survivor for the first time. It won the 2016 Bath Novel Award, was longlisted for the 2019 Desmond Elliot Prize and shortlisted for the 2019 Author's Club Best First Novel Award.

'Captivating' Heather Morris 'Beautiful' Andrew Miller 'Hugely poignant ' Independent 'Moving' Sunday Times Longlisted for the Desmond Elliot Prize Winner of the Bath Novel Award Winner of the Harpers Bazaar Big Book of the Year Shortlisted for the Best First Novel Award Of everyone in her complicated family, Eva was always closest to her grandfather. She is making a film about his life. She is with him when he dies. It is only when she finds the letter from the Jewish Museum in Berlin, hidden in his painting studio, that she realises how many secrets he kept.As she uncovers everything he endured in the Holocaust - and what it took to learn to live again - Eva is confronted by the lies that haunt her family, and a truth that changes her own identity.Kim Sherwood's hope-filled first novel is a powerful portrait of survival echoing through the generations; a testament of love, legacy, and all the important questions we leave unasked.

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