"Taut and illuminating ... memorable ... written with the humility of he who confesses himself and with the honesty of he who bore witness." Primo Levi

"Luminous, almost light-hearted, autobiography about a family of Italian Jews under Mussolini." Frederic Raphael, Sunday Times

Segre tells the story of his childhood and adolescence in Mussolini's Italy. Nurtured in a world of aristocratic privilege, he emerged naive and unprepared for the realities that awaited him. The crash of 1929 and the introduction of Mussolini's anti-Jewish laws saw him on the boat to Tel Aviv, a rare immigrant with a first-class ticket, jacket, silk tie and detachable linen collar, thrust into the pioneering culture of Palestine in the 1930s. Segre explores the pathos and contradictions of such situations with a keen sense of irony which lifts the book out of the world of memoirs and into the realm of literature.