“The narration is from the point of view of two women, one French, the other Dutch, whom the Nazi have widowed. The style is touchingly simple… their hopes and fears of rehabilitation come across convincingly and his background details are painfully vivid” ―Times Literary Supplement

“Though it's a short novel, one becomes deeply involved… There is real anguish in the sudden tragedy that overtakes them in the end” ―Irish Times

“[A Tale of One January] has an inevitability that is wholly acceptable” ―The Times

“A Tale of One January is dark, rosy, and thrilling. In it there is not only death, but also an unexpected degree of wit, and a sexual tension that permeates throughout their time hiding out in an abandoned brick factory” ―Jacobin Magazine

“paints a compelling portrait of what it's like to experience sudden freedom after years of horrific confinement and the constant threat of death.” ―Writer's Voice

Poland, January 1945. Two women and four men escape from a Nazi death march. Each is from a different background and a different country, but all have endured the horrors of imprisonment in Auschwitz. They find refuge in an abandoned factory, and suddenly they realize that they are no longer mere numbers. Even in their wild euphoria at being free, however, they can have no certainty about their future.
This is a tale of exploding joy within a hothouse of fear, a tale of human beings erupting into life after breaking free of the embrace of death – an unusual and moving tale that cements Albert Maltz's reputation as a compassionate observer of character and one of the finest storytellers of his generation.

Albert Maltz (1908–85) was an American playwright, fiction writer and screenwriter. He won the O. Henry Award twice. His novel The Cross and the Arrow about the German resistance to the Nazi Regime was distributed to 150,000 American soldiers during WWII. He worked on a series of films including Casablanca, until he was blacklisted during the mccarthyism era. He is best remembered today for his novels A Tale of One January and A Long Day in a Short Life.