Final Solution is an intelligent and thought-provoking short history of the Holocaust, by historian David Cesarani. Employing an insightful Judeocentric perspective, the book casts a fresh look upon one of history's most terrifying periods.

This compelling narrative uncovers the threads of untold stories, using diaries and letters from within ghettos and camps. These precious documents, mostly in Polish and Yiddish, were previously largely inaccessible to Anglo-American scholars. By adopting a rigorously Judeocentric approach the whole narrative of the march to genocide and its aftermath, the book presents a subtly different timeline and engenders a significant re-evaluation of the how and why.

Final Solution provides a powerful re-assessment of the genocide of World War II, avoiding overstated theories about the guilty. It redefines who shares the guilt, shedding light on the subtleties that contributed to such horrifying events.

Prizes

Short-listed for Jewish Quarterly Wingate Literary Prize 2017 (UK),Long-listed for HWA Non Fiction Crown 2017 (UK)

A brilliant synthesis and interpretation of the greatest crime of the modern era . . . There is so much of value in this harrowing and extraordinary book that it's hard to encompass in a review . . . There are stories here I didn't know and could scarcely have imagined . . . A book that demands to be read and deserves every historical award going. -- Oliver Kamm * The Times *
This is an elegantly written, honest and plausible account and it deserves to be widely read and reflected upon in a continent where racial and religious prejudice is not as far below the surface as we would like to think. Final Solution is a fitting monument to a fine historian and a fine human being. -- Richard Overy * Literary Review *
Masterly . . . Final Solution will take its place among the most authoritative surveys of the persecution and murder of European Jewry in the Second World War * Financial Times *
A masterpiece . . . dense with fascinating detail, so very well written, and so passionately and compellingly argued * Jewish Chronicle *
With his ability to bring coherence to the confusion of genocide and connect those narratives to geopolitical events, Cesarani makes us rethink the Holocaust * Prospect *
Traces a path across a vast mass of material - new and old - demonstrating with urgency and verve how Hitler's progress towards mass extermination of the Jews was never pre-planned or preordained . . . utterly convincing . . . One of Cesarani's most remarkable achievements is to reinvigorate this monstrous narrative -- Sarah Helm * Daily Telegraph *
Lengthy, compelling and devastating . . . a powerful and intensely moving account, drawing on the diaries and letters of those who suffered and died as well as the historical accounts and bland instructions of the remorseless killers. * Irish Independent *
It is difficult not to be first moved and then overwhelmed by the mere listing of what happened, and in this respect Cesarani has fulfilled his ambition of reclaiming the killings of the Jews for another generation. * Observer *
With his clear, detailed analysis, Cesarani has written a definitive study of the Holocaust that succeeds in bridging the gap between academia and popular understanding. -- Lisa Pine * BBC History Magazine *
Ultimately, the book's greatest strength lies less in rewriting the Holocaust then in chronicling it with vivid and synoptic vision . . . few if any have traced as well as David Cesarani does the global skeins of influence, ideas and power on which Jewish fates hung. -- Mark Roseman * Times Literary Supplement *

David Cesarani was internationally recognized as one of this generation's leading Jewish and Holocaust scholars. He was research professor in History at Royal Holloway. He was nominated for a Golden Dagger and was a finalist for the US National Jewish Book Award for History in 2009 for Major Farran's Hat. His biography of Adolf Eichmann was winner of the National Jewish Book Award in 2006 and has been translated into a dozen languages. Earlier books include an acclaimed biography of Arthur Koestler and the controversial Justice Delayed, the story of how Britain became a haven for Nazi war criminals after the end of the war. He had extensive broadcasting and print media experience. In 2005 he was awarded an OBE for his work in the establishment of Holocaust Memorial Day in the UK and was a trustee of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust. He also served on the UK delegation to the International Task Force for Holocaust Remembrance, Education and Research. He died in 2015 and Final Solution: The Fate of the Jews 1933-1949 was published posthumously in January 2016.