This steely account of a childhood on the run, first from the Nazis and then as a refugee in postwar Europe, serves as a fitting memorial to the author, who died in December 1996, shortly before the book was published. Magda Denes settled in America and became a psychoanalyst, which may explain her total lack of sentimentality about her youthful self. The fierce emotions of childhood–exacerbated in this case by the danger she faced as a Jew in fascist Hungary–have seldom been better portrayed.