El Bosque (The Forest)

In a Warsaw occupied by the German army, little Pawel - imaginative, curious and impressionable - grows up protected in the familiar atmosphere of his home, surrounded by women: his maternal grandmother, his aunt Joanna and, above all, his mother Zofia, a woman divided between love for her son and regret for the loss of independence that motherhood imposes on her, distancing her from her cello, from her longed-for readings and, ultimately, from her most intimate self. For Pawel, that home is his world, and he is about to lose it. One night, his father, a member of the resistance, brings home a seriously wounded British pilot, triggering a series of events that forces mother and son to flee and hide in the woods. Decades later, Pawel and Zofia live in England. He, however, is unable to leave behind the memory of that forest, in which for months he and his mother survived refugees in a stable. Far from what was familiar to him and in the midst of nature –in that limbo full of calm, beauty and mystery–, for the first time the elusive and fearful child dared to explore the world around him. The forest will forever represent a hinge between its two existences, in Poland and England. A new life that would be almost perfect if it weren't for the secrets that, when they come to light, open a gap that separates him from Zofia ... An intimate and moving novel about the always special relationship of a mother and a son, the discovery of nature, and on how art can save people's lives even in the most hopeless existential circumstances.