Henry Pollack, the founder of Mirvac, one of Australia’s largest and most successful property development companies, started life in Lodz, a booming Polish textile town. Born in 1932, he belonged to a well-to-do family and became a bookish boy. He writes about his youth with vivid openness, describing not only events but his feelings, thoughts and youthful ideals. With this memoir, written towards the end of his life, Pollack comes close to being the writer he dreamt of becoming as a boy. Memories of his childhood have a fidelity and clarity that may well be the result of a life lopped and restarted at the age of sixteen; those early years are preserved as if in a time capsule.

The Germans invade in September 1939 and, as the first bombs fall on Lodz, Henry is sent off by his family on a pushbike, on what turns out to be a most extraordinary flight to the other side of the globe. He tells this harrowing and epic story with a considered coolness. He doesn’t impose on us his experience of the horror or his near misses; rather, he invites us to experience it ourselves.