Autumn 1940. The Nazis seal 400,000 Jews inside a small area of the Polish capital, creating an urban island cut off from the outside world. Erik Cohen, an elderly psychiatrist, is forced to move into a tiny apartment with his niece and his beloved nine-year-old nephew, Adam. One bitterly cold winter_s day, Adam goes missing. The next morning, his body is discovered in the barbed wire surrounding the ghetto. The boy_s leg has been cut off, and a tiny piece of string has been left in his mouth. Soon, another body turns up _ this time a girl_s, and one of her hands has been taken. Evidence begins to point to a Jewish traitor luring children to their death_ In this profoundly moving and darkly atmospheric historical thriller, the reader is taken into the most forbidden corners of Nazi-occupied Warsaw _ as well as into the most heroic places of the heart.Praise for Richard Zimler: _A riveting literary murder mystery, [The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon] is also a harrowing picture of the persecution of 16th-century Jews and, in passing, an atmospheric introduction to the hermetic Jewish tradition of the Kabbalah._ Independent on Sunday _Zimler [is] a present-day scholar and writer of remarkable erudition and compelling imagination, an American Umberto Eco._ Spectator _Zimler has this spark of genius, which critics can_t explain but readers recognise, and which every novelist desires but few achieve._ Independent _Zimler is an honest, powerful writer._ Guardian