Nadia Wheatley - Strange New World

Name: Nadia Wheatley - Strange New World
Start: 2026-04-30T18:30:00+11:00
End: 2026-04-30T18:30:00+11:00
Location: Upstairs at Gleebooks

About

6pm for 6:30pm Thursday 30 April

Nadia Wheatley in conversation with Linda Jaivin

THE LIBERATION of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp on 15 April 1945 was hailed as a triumph of British victory over Nazi Germany. But for the 55,000 survivors of the ‘Horror Camp’, freedom brought new tragedy. A quarter died in the following five weeks, and for many of those who lived, liberation meant bureaucratic blindness, military rule and a different kind of confinement.

One survivor described the first year of freedom as being ‘more oppressive to our souls than the years in the hell of Auschwitz and Belsen’. He explained that ‘We saw before us a new kind of world, cold and strange.’

Strange New World is the untold story of Belsen’s first year of freedom. Refusing to remain victims, survivors struggled to reclaim agency, build community and make new families and new lives. Their history resonates today as millions of displaced people worldwide navigate the gap between rescue and true liberation.

‘A powerfully moving book, Strange New World recounts the history of Belsen’s first post-liberation year in great detail, yet remains highly readable.’ Dan Stone, author of The Liberation of the Camps: The End and Aftermath of the Holocaust

Nadia Wheatley has published a number of award-winning works of fiction, history and biography over a career of forty years. Strange New World is the culmination of a decade’s research into the history of Displaced Persons in Occupied Germany that began with the memoir Her Mother’s Daughter, winner of the 2019 Nib Award.

Linda Jaivin is an internationally published Australian author, cultural commentator, essayist and translator. She is the author of thirteen books including The Shortest History of China (translated into nearly two dozen languages) and her latest, Bombard the Headquarters! China’s Cultural Revolution.