The Red Magician

A young European girl, unaware of the Nazi threat, has her life transformed by a red-haired magician who challenges the complacency of her village. "Turns the hidden world of Eastern European Jews during the 1940s into a world of wonders, then transcends the Holocaust with magical optimism".--The New York Times.

Winner of the 1983 American Book Award, "The Red Magician" was an immediate classic.
On the eve of World War II, a wandering magician comes to a small Hungarian village prophesying death and destruction. Eleven-year-old Kicsi believes Voros, and attempts to aid him in protecting the village.
But the local rabbi, who possesses magical powers, insists that the village is safe, and frustrates Voros's attempts to transport them all to safety. Then the Nazis come and the world changes.
Miraculously, Kicsi survives the horrors of the concentration camp and returns to her village to witness the final climactic battle between the rabbi and the Red Magician, the Old World and the New.
"The Red Magician" is a notable work of Holocaust literature and a distinguished work of fiction, as well as a marvelously entertaining fantasy that is, in the end, wise and transcendent.