On a windy day in Beverly Hills in October 1980, Thomas Keneally went in search of a replacement for his battered briefcase and returned with the story of Oskar Schindler (and a new bag). The man who sold him the bag and the story was Leopold Pfefferberg, the hero and central subject of this memoir. Pfefferberg, known as Poldek, is a benignly hectoring presence throughout the book. Near the end Keneally rues his inability through illness to attend the funeral of the extraordinary character who insisted, at their very first encounter, that they would be friends ‘to the grave’. 

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