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The Matchbox Girl

Lose yourself in this autumn's most captivating historical novel

Alice Jolly

$42.99

Hardback

Forthcoming
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English
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
06 November 2025
From the multi-award-winning author – a beautiful, stunningly ambitious novel telling the story of a young girl’s battle for survival and search for the truth in occupied Vienna

‘A shimmering masterwork’ Alice Austen ‘An extraordinary novel about resilience’ Amanda Craig ‘A mesmerising tapestry woven across history’ Gina Rippon ‘Gripping and profound. A masterful work of rare complexity that lingers and haunts’ Christine Leunens

Adelheid Brunner does not speak. She writes and draws instead and her ambition is to own one thousand matchboxes. Her grandmother cannot make sense of this, but Adelheid will stop at nothing to achieve her dream. She makes herself invisible, hiding in cupboards with her pet rat, Franz Joseph, listening in on conversations she can’t fully comprehend.

Then she meets Dr Asperger, a man who lets children play all day and who recognises the importance of matchboxes. He invites Adelheid to come and live at the Vienna paediatric clinic, where she and other children like herself will live under observation.

But the date is 1938 and the place is Vienna – a city of political instability, a place of increasing fear and violence. When the Nazis march into the city, a new world is created and difficult choices must be made.

Why are the clinic's children disappearing, and where do they go? Adelheid starts to suspect that some of Dr Asperger’s games are played for the highest stakes. In order to survive, she must play a game whose rules she cannot yet understand.

Triumphant and tragic, soulful and spirited, The Matchbox Girl is a burningly brilliant book – that brings the stories of a generation of lost children into the light.

‘A vividly imagined story told with real drive and heart’ Rachel Seiffert ‘Unique and profoundly human’ Emma Darwin ‘One of the most charismatic and companionable narrators I’ve ever come across’ Toby Litt ‘The sheer brilliance of Alice Jolly’s writing stopped me in my tracks, stole my breath’ Angela Findlay ‘An important, powerful book, so real I couldn’t put it down’ Kathleen Jones
By:  
Imprint:   Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Country of Publication:   United Kingdom
Dimensions:   Height: 236mm,  Width: 160mm,  Spine: 42mm
Weight:   640g
ISBN:   9781526681034
ISBN 10:   152668103X
Pages:   416
Publication Date:  
Audience:   General/trade ,  ELT Advanced
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Forthcoming

Alice Jolly is a novelist and playwright. Her writing has been awarded the PEN/Ackerley Prize, an O Henry Prize and the V. S. Pritchett Memorial Prize, and been longlisted for Ondaatje Prize and the Rathbones Folio Prize. She teaches on the Creative Writing Masters at Oxford University. @JollyAlice

Reviews for The Matchbox Girl: Lose yourself in this autumn's most captivating historical novel

On so many occasions, the sheer brilliance of Alice Jolly’s writing stopped me in my tracks, stole my breath. Her extensive research and incisive imagination weave a narrative as rich as it is haunting ... This is a courageous, important, stunning and timely book. With The Matchbox Girl, Jolly has sown seeds of doubt in our knowing and tilled the hard earth of certainty making space for compassion in today’s troubled world. It’s the kind of novel that doesn’t just illuminate the past, but gently and insistently asks us to re-examine the present - and ourselves -- Angela Findlay An important, powerful book, so real I couldn’t put it down ... This is a story that needed to be told. It challenges how we dole out humanity to other human beings, and it asks big questions that need honest answers -- Kathleen Jones Alice Jolly is a writer of originality, passion and insight into the suffering of the most vulnerable ... This will join classics like Plath's The Bell Jar and Toni Morrison's Beloved as an extraordinary novel about resilience -- Amanda Craig Praise for Alice Jolly: A writer of tremendous humanity * Times Literary Supplement * A rigorously researched, lyrical tour de force * Guardian * Beautifully written and brutally honest * Sunday Times *


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