Book about The Queen’s wedding gown wins Canadian Jewish literary award
Jennifer Robson’s fiction book is about one of the most famous wedding dresses of the 20th century – and the embroiderers who made it.
A book about The Queen’s wedding gown was among the winners of the fifth annual Canadian Jewish Literary Awards this week.
Jennifer Robson’s fiction book ‘The Gown: A Novel of the Royal Wedding’ is about one of the most famous wedding dresses of the 20th century – The Queen’s wedding gown and the embroiderers who made it.
Set in the harsh post-war winter of 1947 and told through the eyes of three women, including Holocaust survivor Miriam Dassin, Robson’s novel is described as a story of rebuilding friendship and family after the devastation of the Shoah.
(Wikipedia/National Film Board of Canada. Photothèque. Library and Archives Canada, e010955850 -https://www.flickr.com/photos/lac-bac/7195938514/)
In the book, Dassin and Ann Hughes form an unlikely friendship at the Mayfair fashion house charged with making the dress for Princess Elizabeth, as told through a grand-daughter who, in Toronto in 2016, discovers that her Nan kept a piece of embroidery from the dress.
Robson is based in Toronto but studied at Oxford, and her book scooped the literary prize together with a host of other offerings, including a biography of Soviet wartime journalist Vasily Grossman, a collection of travel essays from a woman of Yemeni descent, and a history of how Israel’s secret service came into being.
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