Warsaw, Poland, 1939. My mother and father named me Aron, but my father said they should have named me What Have You Done or What Were You Thinking. Aron is a nine-year-old Polish Jew, and a troublemaker. As the walls go up around the ghetto in Warsaw, as the lice and typhus rage, food is stolen and even Jewish police betray their people, Aron smuggles from the other side to survive. In a place where no one thinks of anyone but himself, the only exception is Doctor Korczak; trying to keep a hundred and fifty orphans from starving. They call the Doctor a hero. Aron is not a hero. He is not special or selfless or spirited. He is ordinary. He is willing to do what the Doctor will not.

Author Biography

Jim Shepard is the National Book Award-finalist and highly acclaimed author of seven novels and five collections of stories, including The Book of Aron and Like You'd Understand, Anyway. He lives in Massachusetts with his family and teaches creative writing at the historic liberal arts establishment Williams College. Widely acclaimed as one of the US's finest writers, The World to Come is the first collection of his short stories to be published in the UK.