Marga Minco ranks among the most important Dutch writers. While she started out writing children's stories, followed by witty tales about misalliances and misunderstandings, her reputation lies in the novels and short stories dealing with the Holocaust. Indeed, her work has been made required reading for Dutch high-school students. The narrator in her work is usually someone who resembles the author, a Jewish eyewitness to the arrest and deportation of her family at the hands of the Nazis. Critics praise Minco for directing her lens toward incidental details in order to magnify the larger tragedy. Similarly, her use of language, while always down to earth, nevertheless reveals brilliant unadorned metonymies. A minimalist in every sense of the word, Minco does not analyze; she simply observes and reports. The result is a sober style composed of a verbal economy that matches her emotional restraint. Except for Minco's most famous...