"My grandfather was the only member of his family to escape Poland before the Second World War broke out. He was twelv…"

"Like the monsters, the enchanted-islands story was also a truth in disguise. Compared to the horrors of mainland Euro…"

"When I was fifteen, an extraordinary and terrible thing happened, and there was only Before and After."

"All I could think was that grandfathers were supposed to die in beds, in hushed places humming with machines, not in …"

"A falling-down wreck on the edge of town, curtains permanently drawn, that would turn out to have been home to some a…"

"Finally I came upon a pair of rooms missing entire walls, into which a little forest of underbrush and stunted trees …"

"When someone won't let you in, eventually you stop knocking."

"Sometimes you just need to go through a door."

"It was true of course, what my dad had said: I did worship my grandfather. There were things about him that I needed …"

"It was one thing for a grandparent to withhold something […] from a grandchild, quite another for a father to keep it…"