David Hartnett's audacious and haunting first novel plunges us into a world of terror and guilt even as it tenderly evokes the intimacies of family life. Set in a fictional Jewish ghetto in wartime eastern Europe, BLACK MILK follows the fortunes of a family of Viennese deportees as they confront the reality of exile. For Alicia, her mother, her son Chaim and uncle Henryk, the tensions of 'resettlement' are complicated by encounters with people already innured to the ghetto's round of humdrum desperation. There is Josef, formerly Alicia's lover and now a member of the judenrat administration; Rachel, the adolescent underground activist; Schaefer, the German overseer; and Mendel, a hasidic holy fool. As the novel builds towards its stark and terrible climax, these relationships knot and unravel across a narrative that deftly blends the matter-of-fact with the visionary. BLACK MILK is not an easy novel to forget.