Rachel Meller, The Box with the Sunflower Clasp

Set against a backdrop of the war in the Far East, The Box with the Sunflower Clasp is a sweeping family memoir that tells the hidden history of the Jews of Shanghai.

Rachel Meller was never close to her aunt Lisbeth, a cool, unemotional woman with a drawling Viennese-Californian accent, a cigarette in her hand. But when Lisbeth died, she left Rachel an intricately carved Chinese box with a sunflower clasp. Inside the box were photographs, letters and documents that led Rachel to uncover a story she had never known: that of a passionate Jewish teenager growing up in elegant Vienna, who was caught up by war, and forced to flee to Shanghai.

Find out more about Rachel's insights as she examines what it means to survive, and what the legacy of displacement and war might mean for the generation that comes afterwards.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Heffers Bookshop, 20 Trinity Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom