In the summer of 1938 Sonja is lifted onto a Kindertransport train that will take her from
Nazi-occupied Austria to London. She leaves behind her parents Fania and Arnold and her baby
brother Moses. She is the only member of her family to survive. In 1966 Fania is working as a
massage therapist in Montreal a country that provided her safe haven after she lost her entire
family in the second world war. And yet there are strange echoes impressions of those she
loves everwhere she turns. Has she lost her mind or is her family still alive? In 21st century
Vienna Arnold receives a message from an Englishwoman claiming to be his long-lost daughter
Sonja. Daring to believe that she survived Arnold waits for her at the train station. Finally
in New York 2002 Moses is haunted by the ghost of his best friend who was killed in the
Prague Spring and who exhorts Moses to return to Prague to make peace for the dead. Moving
from world war two to 2016 between Vienna and Prague London and Montreal New York and Miami
Rooms for Vanising is the story of a family blown apart and across the globe by war. They each
believe that they are the sole survivor and maybe they are because this is a novel of
maybe-lived lives parallel worlds and possibilities and one populated by ghosts. Spellbinding
and profound Rooms for Vanishing explores the collisions between desire and reality memory
and facts it is a singular work that masterfully reimagines the lost possibilities of history
itself.
