Written in the form of a suspense novel, Emil & Karl draws readers into the dilemma faced by two young boys--one Jewish, the other not--when they suddenly find themselves without homes or families in Vienna on the eve of World War II. A taut, gripping page-turner, it offers a picture of life during the period and the moral challenges faced under Nazism--and a prescient glimpse of the early days of the Holocaust. Written in Yiddish, it is here translated into English for the first time. In Vienna, Austria, in 1940, two nine-year-old boys, one Jewish and one Aryan, are classmates and best friends when events of the Nazi occupation draw them even closer together as they fight to survive and escape together.