Andrea Kon

The Amber Tablets Andrea Kon

Three tiny pieces of amber as small as medicinal tablets, one the colour of clear honey with a fly petrified at its centre; one dark as treacle toffee; and one delicately carved into the shape of an eagle's talon. Inside the freezing Amber Room, 150 slave labourers, including Simeon Karminsky are tasked with dismantling the world-famous mosaic panels for shipment from Leningrad to the Baltic. While his fearful fellow labourers and their guards are mesmerised in horror as one of their number is lashed to death for trying to steal a single piece of the amber mosaic, Karminsky swallows three in an act of pure defiance against his Nazi oppressors. The sole survivor of a mass murder, Karminsky grows to believe that his three little 'amber tablets' have magical powers that have not only save his life but affect the lives of those connected most closely with him.