'Three Books' by Tamara Tracz is a very special three-hardback-volume slip cased book. It is, first and foremost, a story that follows several generations of a family as their lives unfold in various cities, countries, and continents during the course of the twentieth century. It is a story with a cast of characters, some strong, some exceptional, some familiar, some curious. It is a story of births and deaths, of lives led and of the forces that shape them. The family in 'Three Books' is a Jewish Family, and their story is one of emigration and persecution that was profoundly affected by the Holocaust. It is a story that is shared with the stories of many countless thousands of other families ? of taking flight from the Nazi regime, of German forces arriving in towns and villages and searching out the Jewish inhabitants, of summary executions and mass graves. It is a story of branches of the family destroyed, and of the survival of others. It is as distressing, disillusioning, and disheartening a story as one might fear to read of the plight of the Jews last century. But 'Three Books' is not written in the usual form of family biography, and is not only the story of this family's history. It is also a story about stories, about the passing on of information 15 b/w and colour photos
