New Swedish Books, autumn 2019 1
New Swedish Books 44 Helena Trus (b. 1982) A Kilo
of Sugar. Grandma Will Never Forget the Price of her Life, 203 p. Publisher Norstedts www.norstedts.se Rights Norstedts Agency Linda Altrov Berg linda.altrovberg@norstedts.se Debut author Helena Trus is a versatile journalist who gives talks in schools on the subject of the Holocaust and antiSemitism in the modern world. A Kilo of Sugar. Grandma Will Never Forget the Price of her Life It is March 1943 in Poland and 16-year-old Cyla Bierman, whose family smuggled her out of the Lwów ghetto, is hiding in a stable so that at least someone in her family might survive. She is discovered by two Ukrainian boys who call themselves police officers and taunt her saying: “Do you know how much you’re worth? We turn in people like you for a kilo of sugar”. Helena Trus got the title for her book, from this encounter in a barn over half a century ago. Sitting at a kitchen table in a Stockholm suburb, where an abundance of food is always served when her granddaughter visits, Cyla, Holocaust survivor, talks about her life. For all these years living in Sweden, she has kept silent and let her husband Lejb tell people about it. Now she breaks her silence, while coaxing her granddaughter with yet another blueberry bun: “Eat, you’re as skinny as a rake”. Food is survival. Helena Trus eats and listens, and turns the experience into a book where the grandmother’s story is interwoven with accounts of the modern-day return of open anti-Semitism, which shouldn’t be possible, and yet there it is, mocking and murderous. The book is rich with tender little details of everyday life, and the way it moves between times and places clearly demonstrates how the past continues to operate in the present day.