In 1942 Norway, Jewish teenager Ilse Stern and her family are faced with anti-Semitism and German occupation. This family is impacted forever as the Nazis inch closer and closer to them. This novel highlights the real-life horrors of being a Jew in a German-occupied country, but it also brings in the theme of chance, as the novel continues to ask “what if” questions along the way. The novel displays not only Ilse's perspective, but a glimpse into the perspectives and experiences of her family members, neighbors, and her crush Hermann.

2020 GLLI Translated YA Book Prize Honor, Norwegian Ministry of Culture prize, and Young People's Book of the Year in Norway.

Author lives in Norway.

Norway. Originally published in Norwegian as Nærmere høst by H. Aschehoug & Co. in 2012. English translation by Rosie Hedger published in the United States by Authur A. Levine Books.Scholastic in 2017.

An international award-winning novel of World War II, the Holocaust, and first love, set in the snowy streets of Oslo.

It's October 1942, in Oslo, Norway. Fifteen-year-old Ilse Stern is waiting to meet boy-next-door Hermann Rod for their first date. She was beginning to think he'd never ask her; she's had a crush on him for as long as she can remember. But Hermann won't be able to make it tonight. What Ilse doesn't know is that Hermann is secretly working in the Resistance, helping Norwegian Jews flee the country to escape the Nazis. The work is exhausting and unpredictable, full of late nights and code words and lies to Hermann's parents, to his boss... to Ilse. And as life under German occupation becomes even more difficult, particularly for Jewish families like the Sterns, the choices made become more important by the hour: To speak up or to look away? To stay or to flee? To act now or wait one more day?In this internationally acclaimed debut, Marianne Kaurin recreates the atmosphere of secrecy and uncertainty in World War II Norway in a moving story of sorrow, chance, and first love.