The Butterfly and the Axe: An Israeli woman and a Ukrainian man investigate the murder of a Jewish family in the Holocaust on the eve of Russia's invasion. A novel

As a novel, The Butterfly and the Axe—its title gradually becomes heartbreakingly clear—grabs one’s attention and holds it. —Carlin Romano for Moment MagazineSpring 1944. A Jewish family is murdered in a remote Ukrainian village. Who were they? Who were the killers? Three generations later, an Israeli woman and a British man of Ukrainian origins set out to find out how their families were implicated in this crime. They also discover how this untold murder has warped their own lives. Narrated by an unnamed historian, and based on fragments of memories, testimonies, diaries, letters and confessions, this novel seeks to fill a gap in the historical record of the Holocaust by reimagining those who were murdered and erased from memory, and to shed light on the transgenerational effects of trauma. Omer Bartov was born in Israel and teaches history in the United States. His mother emigrated from Galicia to Palestine before World War II. Most of the rest of his family were murdered under unknown circumstances in the Holocaust.