Raves & Reviews

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“Meticulous…a brilliantly heart-wrenching memoir… When Time Stopped is filled with heartbreaking, spine-tingling stories. But Neumann’s treasure trove of personal history isn’t solely responsible for the book’s appeal: she’s a gifted, visceral writer as well, bringing each character alive as they experience the horrors of World War II… a notable new memoir not to be missed.” — Alice Cary, BookPage, STARRED review

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"Compelling...brilliant...This remarkable, beautifully written book is full of sadness but it also full of great beauty and joy." — Daily Mail

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“Extraordinary…Many writers have sought to address the horrors of the Holocaust. Yet while treading a familiar path, Neumann manages to bring an engaging perspective through the personal nature of her journey of discovery….Neumann’s efforts to tell [her father] Hans’s story chronologically, rather than in the order she unravelled the mystery, is especially effective. At times the revelations are so extraordinary to modern eyes that the memoir has an almost fictional feel.” —Financial Times

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“A meticulously researched, gripping and poignant memoir.” —The Observer

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“Extraordinary…what remains is so vast, so much more than one life brought out from the shadows: it is a daughter’s deep love and humanity towards a complex and occasionally difficult father who tried to shield her from the pain of knowing about his earlier life, but it is also the story of a whole family lovingly recreated….[When Time Stopped is] a treasure to be savoured as testament of the human will to survive.” --Anne Sebba, The Spectator

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“Neumann debuts with a deeply moving account of her father’s life during the Holocaust… This gripping, expertly researched narrative will inspire those looking to uncover their own family histories.” — Publishers Weekly 

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"In this elegantly structured debut, the author reconstructs with considerable literary finesse the life of her father...A multilayered memoir written from the unusual perspective of a Holocaust survivor's daughter who grew up in Latin America." — Kirkus Reviews

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 “Occasionally there appears a book so devastating that the only response is stunned silence….When Time Stopped is about the triumph of the human spirit.”— Frances Wilson, The Oldie

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“Compelling. An extraordinary Holocaust story” — Blake Morrison, The Guardian

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“Remarkable... Through meticulous research Neumann tells the true story-part memoir, part history-of her heart-wrenching and ultimately life-affirming journey.” — Georgia Hunter, New York Times bestselling author of We Were the Lucky Ones

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“This is one of the most powerful and profoundly moving family stories of the Holocaust to have been published in many years and a must read.” — Dan Stone, Professor of Modern History and Director, Holocaust Research Institute, Royal Holloway, University of London

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“A fascinating and beautifully constructed memoir and more than that, a testimonial to the power of meticulous research and family love.” — Caroline Moorehead, historian, journalist and New York Times bestselling author of Village of Secrets and A Train in Winter

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“I’ve read countless memoirs. I’ve read hundreds of books about the Holocaust and mysteries and detective stories and rigorously researched tomes of history and psychological studies of the effects of trauma. But never in my reading life have I ever come across anything akin to this magical, brilliant, and gripping work of art combining all of these elements into a lyrical tapestry of one woman’s quest to understand her father’s mysterious past and therefore her own. To call this moving is an understatement. It is a journey of untold grace, sorrow, and love.”
— Deborah Copaken, New York Times bestselling author of The Red Book and Shutterbabe: Adventures in Love and War

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“When Time Stopped is Ariana Neumann’s journey of discovery, lyrically set down in this truly exceptional book.  She shines an intimate light upon a time unique in its horror, and tells a story of bravery, and rare survival. Yet the events she describes happened more than two decades before she was born. To a man to whom she was very close, but whose secrets she was only able to pursue after his death - thanks to the one hoard of evidence he never destroyed. This is a work of very great talent.” — Jon Snow, journalist and UK Channel 4 television presenter

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“When Time Stopped is an astonishing family memoir that will imprint itself on your psyche as only the best books can, forever changing the way you look at your own family. With a mastery of the dogged art of research rarely seen, and with an exquisite narrative sensibility to match, Ariana Neumann has breached the hidden surface of her family’s tumultuous past and brought not only their tragedies and sorrows, but also their joys and loves, to indelible light. I will carry the experience of this book with me for a very long time.” — John Burnham Schwartz, author of The Red Daughter, The Commoner and Reservation Road

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“Growing up in a comfortable Caracas home, surrounded by joy, gaiety and the ‘birds of paradise’ -- and a father so revered that he had streets named after him in Venezuela -- Ariana Neumann willed an adventure to come her way. But nothing could have prepared her for the true-life story which was to unfold upon her beloved father’s death, back into the darkest depths of human history. Lucidly-written, this is a gripping, heart-wrenching journey back to wartime Prague and Berlin. Ariana Neumann has written the book that her remarkable father simply couldn’t.” — Tom Gross, former Prague and Jerusalem correspondent, Sunday Telegraph

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“Ariana Neumann has given us a gripping true story-the account of her father's determination to survive the Holocaust and the clues he left behind for her as an old man that let her solve the mystery of her family's unspoken history. This is nonfiction that reads like a detective thriller.” — Tilar J. Mazzeo, New York Times bestselling author of Irena's Children, The Widow Clicquot, and The Hotel on Place Vendome

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“In a grand house in Caracas in the 1970s, a young girl comes of age dreaming of becoming a detective and solving mysteries, particularly the mystery of her charismatic, enigmatic father. Four decades later, after he dies, and herself a mother, she embarks on an extraordinary journey through Central Europe and South America to uncover her father's past. Through pre-war Prague's intelligentsia to the rise of fascism in Europe to the horror of Hitler's camps, she combines a daughter's love with a profound yearning for truth. The result is a love letter to a father who, out of sheer will and determination, did not allow the Nazis to destroy him—and who rose to become one of Venezuela's most successful industrialists. Part literary memoir, part mystery tale, Ariana Neumann's tribute to her father is a classic story of redemption and love.” — Janine di Giovanni, 2019 Guggenheim Fellow and author of The Morning They Came for Us: Dispatches from Syria

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“This book is utterly riveting: Ms. Neumann's memoir reads like a detective novel, as she unravels her late father's complex, agonizing yet inspiring trajectory. Conjuring the lives of her relatives murdered in the Holocaust, she brings their lost world to vivid life.” — Claire Messud, New York Times bestselling author of The Emperor’s Children and The Woman Upstairs

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“WHEN TIME STOPPED is beautiful- deeply moving and extraordinary in its reach and its depth. I felt such kinship with the way in which Ariana Neumann moved through the world in her journey. It is absolutely remarkable.”
— Edmund de Waal, artist and bestselling author of The Hare with Amber Eyes and The White Road

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“Ariana Neumann could have passed over the opportunity to pursue her family story, and all of these beautiful tragic moments of our own human story would have been lost.  As she uncovers the minutiae of the victims' everyday lives, Neumann gets to the heart of the Holocaust, through the little things that made each of them human, in the midst of such inhumanity.   Through her painstaking work, Neumann takes lifeless fragments that ensured her family's obscurity, and magically brings them back to life in this carefully woven beautifully written tapestry. I feel like I lived through every minute of Neumann’s emotional and painstaking work.  She not only has done justice to those closest to her, but to understanding our shared humanity. If you are in any doubt about the power and importance of knowing family history before you read this, you will be in no doubt after. This is a work of resistance against oblivion, a reminder against forgetting, an investigation driven by true love.”  — Stephen D. Smith PhD, Finci-Viterbi Executive Director Chair USC Shoah Foundation, UNESCO Chair on Genocide Education

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“Remarkable...Through painstaking, meticulous research Neumann tells the true story-part memoir, part history-of her heart-wrenching and ultimately life-affirming journey in uncovering her family's long hidden past.” — Georgia Hunter, New York Times bestselling author of We Were the Lucky Ones

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“When Time Stopped is a remarkable and beautifully written book. Hans Neumann's story is astonishing, confirming that when it comes to the Holocaust we should expect only the unexpected. This is one of the most powerful and profoundly moving family stories of the Holocaust to have been published in many years and a must read.” — Dan Stone, Professor of Modern History and Director, Holocaust Research Institute, Royal Holloway, University of London

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“Ariana Neumann's beautiful, meticulously researched memoir is an extraordinarily moving story of a family’s lost history, a father’s well-kept secret, and a daughter who pieces it all together with courage, tenacity, and most of all, love.” — Dani Shapiro, best-selling author of Inheritance, Hourglass and Family History

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“Ariana Neumann’s story may strike a chord, and rightly so. The slow and pitiless brutality that took hold of much of Europe in the 1930s is a story that can never be told too often. What makes this account so effective is that it’s personal and, because of the dogged extensiveness of her research, Neumann reminds us of the small details that make the Nazi persecution of the Jews all the more chilling. It’s not always a grim story. Alongside anger and despair there is love and hope. But the message is stark. This is the way bullies work. When Time Stopped is more than just history. It’s a warning.” — Michael Palin

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“An astonishing story of survival…Neumann’s eloquent, skillfully researched book will appeal to many, especially those interested in family histories and the lives of Holocaust survivors.” — Library Journal