From the bestselling author of The Tattooist of Auschwitz, this novel is a powerful testament to the triumph of the human will and one woman's fierce determination to survive against all odds.
1942. Cilka Klein is just sixteen years old when she is taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. The Commandant at Birkenau, Schwarzhuber, notices her long beautiful hair, and forces her separation from the other women prisoners. Cilka learns quickly that power, even unwillingly given, equals survival here.
After liberation, Cilka is charged as a collaborator by the Russians and sent to a desolate, brutal prison camp in Siberia known as Vorkuta, inside the Arctic Circle.
Innocent, imprisoned once again, Cilka faces challenges both new and horribly familiar, each day a battle for survival. Cilka befriends a woman doctor, and learns to nurse the ill in the camp, struggling to care for them under unimaginable conditions. And when she tends to a man called Alexandr, Cilka finds that despite everything, there is room in her heart for love.
Based on what is known of Cilka Klein's time in Auschwitz, and on the experiences of women in Siberian prison camps, Cilka's Journey is the breathtaking sequel to The Tattooist of Auschwitz.
'She was the bravest person I ever met' Lale Sokolov, The Tattooist of Auschwitz
About the Author
Born in New Zealand, Heather Morris is passionate about stories of survival, resilience and hope. In 2003, while working in a large public hospital in Melbourne, Heather was introduced to an elderly gentleman who 'might just have a story worth telling'. The day she met Lale Sokolov changed both their lives. Lale's story formed the basis for The Tattooist of Auschwitz and the follow-up novel, Cilka's Journey. In 2021 she published the phenomenal conclusion to the Tattooist trilogy, Three Sisters, after being asked to tell the story of three Holocaust survivors who knew Lale from their time in Auschwitz-Birkenau. Together, the three books have sold more than 17 million copies worldwide. Her exceptional new novel, Sisters under the Rising Sun, was published in 2023 bringing another heart-wrenching true story to life with experiences of women in Japanese POW camps, and how they found bravery in sisterhood and hope to survive in music.
