In order to get more accurate results, our search has the following Google-Type search functionality:
If you use '+' in front of a word, then that word will be present in the search results.
ex: Harry +Potter will return results with the word 'Potter'.
If you use '-' in front of a word, then that word will be absent in the search results.
ex: Harry -Potter will return results without the word 'Potter'.
If you use 'AND' between two words, then both of those words will be present in the search results.
ex: Harry AND Potter will return results with both 'Harry' and 'Potter'.
If you use 'OR' between two words, then bth of those words may or may not be present in the search results.
ex: Harry OR Potter will return results with just 'Harry', results with just 'Potter' and results with both 'Harry' and 'Potter'.
If you use 'NOT' before a word, then that word will be absent in the search results.
ex: Harry NOT Potter will return results without the word 'Potter'.
Placing '""' around words will perform a phrase search. The search results will contain those words in that order.
ex: "Harry Potter" will return any results with 'Harry Potter' in them, but not 'Potter Harry'.
Using '*' in a word will perform a wildcard search. The '*' signifies any number of characters. Searches can not start with a wildcard.
ex: Pot*er will return results with words starting with 'Pot' and ending in 'er'. In this case, 'Potter' will be a match.
Interweaving fiction and memoir in multiple threads, Thistledown Seed follows the displacement and violence of the Holocaust for a Polish family who subsequently settle in Western Australia. In this deeply moving account, Louise Helfgott explores another side of her family's tragic past made famous in the Oscar-winning movie, Shine, about her brother David Helfgott. The floating thistledown seed, often seen in Europe during summer, represents the diaspora of the Jewish people who were scattered around the world as a result of the Holocaust.
'Only a poet perhaps can extract such beauty from a tragedy so immense it will shape generations not yet even born. Thistledown Seed is a powerful, moving, if forgiving exploration of hearts so frozen with emotion that their capacity to cripple is seemingly unbounding - a searing, yet beguiling record of one of the most painful journeys into adulthood I have read.' - Sara Dowse, author of Sapphires, Schemetime and As the Lonely Fly
'This beautifully written and deeply moving book weaves together three narratives tracing trauma down the generations. The first is Louise Helfgott's own present day quest through modern Europe to trace members of her family lost to the Holocaust. The second is the story the generation who perished in the incinerators of the death camps. In the third Louise bears painful witness as a small child to the impact of trauma on her parents, survivors who forever mourned and lived in the shadow of past nightmares.' - Emeritus Associate Professor Gail Phillips, Murdoch University