Book review: The Book of Aron - a child's view of Warsaw ghetto

Jim Shepard has always been preoccupied by history. His long-admired collections of short stories come with multiple pages of acknowledgments that read like the bibliographies of an intellectually promiscuous research student. His fictional subjects are often real-life figures who feature in various human fiascos spanning the centuries.

Shepard's new novel, The Book of Aron, set in the ghetto of Warsaw, Poland, is another historical fiction, but a departure of sorts. Where Shepard's short fiction often features the bit players and hapless sidemen of disaster, The Book of Aron brings to life an indisputably great man, the child advocate Janusz Korczak, who ran an orphanage and followed his charges to Treblinka.

But, as the title suggests, this is Aron's story - that of a misbegotten boy born at a disastrous time. His antics exasperate his father, who beats him. His mother, loving but harried, is confounded by his behaviour. Sickness, toil, penury, bad teeth, disaster and death rule their lives long before the Nazis even make an appearance.

Aron's early efforts to be a better person are touching. "I lectured myself on walks," he tells us. "I made lists of ways I could improve." He takes to books. He loves his mother. In the quiet hours of night, they form a special bond that is Aron's only tether to humanity.