Aniko

Aniko: The Stranger Who Loved me is a a literary biography that has won three awards, including the EPPIE for nonfiction in 2004. It is the life story of a woman who achieved the impossible and survived the unsurvivable -- more than once. Her courage, imagination and ruthlessness saved her and her family from death during the terrible years of the Second World War. Hampered by the stifling atmosphere of life behind the Iron Curtain, and by being a woman in a male-dominated culture, she nevertheless managed to build a million-dollar export business. But the greatest challenge of her life was to protect her husband's dignity over 31 years... Her son resented the coming of a new man into her life, and carried out a secret war against his stepfather. This may have eventually resulted in one of them murdering the other. Instead, the boy was transported to Australia for the term of his natural life, like the convicts of old. How would you react if the man you loved tore your child from you? This is a book of passion, told with force by that son as a tribute to his mother's memory.