Author: Lantos, Peter Interest age: from c 8 yearsPublished on 2 January 2025 by Scholastic in the United Kingdom.Paperback | 144 pages229 x 153 x 10 | 348g “Deeply moving” - Booktrust“A gripping story of love, courage and triumphover evil” - The Bookseller“Can, and should, be read by an audience ofany age.” - Jewish NewsA story of survival, of love between mother and son andof enduring hope in the face of unspeakable hardship. An importantread. The Boy Who Didnt Want to Die describes an extraordinaryjourney, made by Peter, a boy of five, throughwar-torn Europe in 1944 and 1945.Peter and his parents set out from a small Hungarian town, travellingthrough Austria and then Germany together. Along the way,unforgettable images of adventure flash one after another: sleepingin a tent and then under the sky, discovering a disused brickfactory, catching butterflies in the meadows - and as Peter realisesthat this adventure is really a nightmare -watching bombs falling from the blue sky outside Vienna, learningmaths from his mother in Belsen.All this is drawn against a background of terror, starvation,infection and, inevitably, death, before Peter and his mother canreturn home. Author Professor Peter Lantos is a Fellow ofthe Academy of Medical Sciences and in his previous life was aninternationally renowned clinical neuroscientist. His memoir, ParallelLines (Arcadia Books, 2006) was translatedinto Hungarian, German and Italian. Closed Horizon (Arcadia,2012) was his first novel.Peter was awarded the British Empire Medal in 2020 for‘services to Holocaust education and awareness’. He is one of the last of the generation of survivors and this– his first book for children – will serve as a testimonyto his experience.Peter lives in London. MORE REVIEWS OF THE BOY WHO DIDNT WANT TO DIEthe book [is] absolutely compelling, partly because it isa true story of extraordinary resilience and survival in unimaginablecircumstances, but also because Lantos stark recollectionsmake very powerful reading. Gaby Wine, The JewishChronicle
