DAVID YEARSLEY is fascinated by the account of four composers who transformed their experiences of the second world war and the Holocaust into deeply moving works of art
J SS Bach
by Martin Goodman
(Wrecking Ball Press, £14)
J SS Bach starts tragically and, seemingly, tangentially.
It is 1962 and Katja Birchendorf rescues her pregnant daughter Uwe from her squalid flat in Sydney. But Uwe has a death wish, having discovered earlier that her late father Dieter was the adjutant at a concentration camp and is so physically weak that she dies giving birth to daughter Rosa.
CHRIS MOSS joins the hunt in Argentina for the works of Poland’s most enigmatic exile
GORDON PARSONS is intrigued by a biography of the Marxist intellectual and author, made from the point of view of his son
JULIA THOMAS unpicks the mental processes that explain why book-to-film adaptations so often disappoint
KEN COCKBURN relishes the memoir of a translator, but wonders whether the autobiography underlying the impulse would make a better book


