David Ryan’s The Butterfly’s Daughter is a truly ambitious endeavour, with signal notes to William Styron’s Sophie’s Choice and Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five.

Set against the backdrop of Nazi occupation and the Shoah, The Butterfly’s Daughter tells the tale of Vlinder (the Butterfly), who must choose between giving up her baby daughter in the hope she survives, or keep the child and risk her suffering the fate of her fellow Dutch Jews.

What follows is a tale of intergenerational family trauma, loss, suffering and restoration, love and the determination of ordinary Jewish people to uncover the intimate stories of this most tragic of historical events.

Skilfully, Ryan does not romanticise or lionise the characters, even the Butterfly herself, lending a rawness and reality that infuses the storyline with genuine pathos.