In The Hollow Tree, Jacob Rosenberg masterfully brings us the trauma of a persecuted soul. The interminable emptiness that comes with losing everything and anyone you’ve ever loved. The devoid and hopeless psychological landscape of a displaced person. Jan Milder has everything – a loving family, wealth, and a woman he dearly loves. Those who pull the strings however have other things in mind. Jan and his kind, the sojourners, are no longer welcome. A prelude to what is about to befall them is the attempted beating of his father.

Soon friends and family will be arrested, tortured and executed. Jan is forced to flee in the dead of night leaving behind a pregnant lover and broken hearts he’ll never see again. From that moment on he becomes yet another Odysseus in search of his beloved Ithaca. It is this yearning that keeps him sane and searching. And he does finally get there, like Odysseus, to see that someone else is living in his house and that his Penelope, Marion, has married another.

An absolutely beautiful novel deeply pervaded by both love and pain. A testament to a very human writer.