Nowhere in Africa is the extraordinary tale of a Jewish family who flees the Nazi regime in 1938 for a remote farm in Kenya. Abandoning their once-comfortable existence in Germany, Walter Redlich, his wife Jettel, and their five-year-old daughter, Regina, each deal with the harsh realities of their new life in different ways. Attorney Walter is resigned to working the farm as a caretaker; pampered Jettel resists adjustment at every turn; while the shy yet curious Regina immediately embraces the country—learning the local language and customs, and finding a friend in Owuor, the farm's cook. As the war rages on the other side of the world, the family’s relationships with their strange environment become increasingly complicated as Jettel grows more self-assured and Walter more haunted by the life they left behind. In 1946, with the war over, Regina's fondest dream comes true when her brother Max is born. Walter's decision, however, to return to his homeland to help rebuild a new Germany puts his family into turmoil again. Visit the Web site for the film at www.nowhereinafrica.com Based on Zweig's personal experience as a German Jewish refugee child in Kenya during World War II, this novel inspired the 2003 Oscar Award winner for best foreign film. Now the book has been translated into English for the first time, and as in the movie, the drama is in the family's confused search for home where three worlds and three languages--English, German, and Swahili--intersect and people "cannot agree on a common word for strife." The rural Kenyan setting is idyllic, the "houseboy" Owuor a perfect mentor, and somehow the desperate Jewish aliens don't see the local racism toward the "natives." But there's no nostalgia about the refugee family: their leaving, their wrenching guilt about those they left behind, their struggle at school and work. Best of all is the child's view of the war at home. Husband and wife fight all the time. The beautiful lady can't stand it on the farm, but when he wants to return to Germany after the war, she can't leave again. The ironic mix of anger and sorrow is unforgettable. Hazel Rochman Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved “By 1938, the Nazi terror had flung German Jews far and wide, in an ad hoc diaspora reaching from Argentina to Shanghai. One less-known place of refuge was Kenya, where middle-class Jewish families struggled to adapt to life in a rural outpost of the British Empire. Nowhere in Africa, which inspired the excellent film of the same name, is Stefanie Zweig's frankly autobiographical novel about this bewildered, homesick group of refugees.”—Rand Richards Cooper, New York Times Book Review “A remarkable Holocaust memoir. . . . The story of flight, upheaval, adjustment, disruption, and turmoil is impressive testimony to the strength of the human spirit and is well worth reading.”—Morton I. Teicher, National Jewish Post and Opinion “Based on Zweig’s personal experience as a German Jewish refugee child in Kenya during World War II, this novel inspired the 2002 Oscar Award winner for best foreign film. . . . The ironic mix of anger and sorrow is unforgettable.”—Booklist 1995 hardcover German edition, Nirgendwo in Afrika , Langen Müller Herbig Terrace Books, a trade imprint of the University of Wisconsin Press Nowhere in Africa is the first English-language edition of the best-selling autobiographical novel that is the basis for the 2002 Academy Award winner for best foreign-language film. The University of Wisconsin Press will also publish the first English translation of the sequel, Somewhere in Germany , timed to the release of the new film in 2005. Stefanie Zweig was born in Leobschutz, Upper Silesia, in 1932. In 1938 she and her parents fled to Kenya, as a result of the Nazi persecution of Jews. Her father, a lawyer and notary public, worked as a manager on a farm and earned just enough to finance his daughter's schooling. The family spent most of its time in Ol’ Joro Orok, situated directly at the Equator—3,000 meters above sea level—a very remote place, even for Africa. In 1944 Stefanie Zweig's father enlisted in the British Army, which also enabled him and his family to return to Germany in 1947. Upon their return, they were shocked to see so much destruction, hunger, and despair. Stefanie, who could not read or write German, had problems adjusting to this alien world. However, after graduating from high school she worked as a journalist for a Jewish newspaper. In 1963 she became the chief editor of the culture section of the Abendpost-Nachtausgabe in Frankfurt. She has been working as a freelance journalist and author since 1988. She has written numerous youth books and novels, which have won many awards and prizes in Europe, and her autobiographical novels Nirgendwo in Afrika and Irgendwo in Deutschland have become bestsellers.