Celebrated British journalist Melanie Phillips’ first novel interweaves a Jewish television producer’s pursuit of a rare, ancient manuscript with his own journey of self-discovery. Autobiographical overtones echo in the left-wing protagonist who gradually becomes aware of the knee-jerk anti-Zionism absorbed by the British media, himself included, and begins reexamining his own roots.

The manuscript he stumbles upon and sets out to translate from medieval French chronicles one of the final and most tragic chapters in the history of a much earlier, very different English Jewish community.

A finely drawn subplot contrasts the actions of two bit players in World War II: the heroic sacrifice made by an anonymous Jewish immigrant recruited by the
British army during the retreat from Dunkirk, and a Polish Nazi collaborator’s heartless exploitation of a Jewish girl. Both acts have been almost erased by
time; the manuscript, similarly all but forgotten, closes the circle.

Between transcribing the record of the martyrs of York, tracing its convoluted path to Poland, then back to England, and setting both against a backdrop of modern Anglo-Jewry in its various hues, all within a fairly short novel, Phillips has set her sights high. That she accomplishes all this, throwing in a drop of Israeli politics to boot, is a tribute to her storytelling prowess as well as her ability to clarify complexities – skills she puts to regular use in her exposure of anti-Israel bias in world affairs.