More Than I Love My Life

From the bestselling, Man Booker International Prize-winning author of To the End of the Land, a sweeping novel of three generations of women.

More Than I Love My Life is the story of three women: Vera, age ninety; her middle-aged daughter, Nina; and her granddaughter, Gili, who at thirty-nine is a filmmaker and a wary consumer of affection. A bitter secret divides each mother and daughter pair, though Gili-- abandoned by Nina when she was just three--has always been close to her grandmother. With Gili making the arrangements, they travel together to Goli Otok, a barren island off the coast of Croatia, where Vera, then a young widow, was imprisoned and tortured for three years after she refused to betray her husband's memory and denounce him as an enemy of the people. This unlikely journey--filtered through the lens of Gili's camera, as she seeks to make a film that might help explain her life--lays bare the intertwining of fear, love, and mercy, and the complex overlapping demands of romantic and parental passion