Drawing on the Yiddish tradition of storytelling the awardwinning Sapphires is constructed of thirteen interlinked stories that tell of journeys in the lives of the descendants of Ruchel Kozminsky who left Russia in the 1890sMiriam Bernice Janet Alice and most centrally Evelyn a Sydneybased television comedy writer A haunting evocative and often funny account of love family and belongingSapphires was first published in 1994 and won the ACT Book of the Year Award in 1995 Sara Dowse is also the author of West Block 1993 2020 Digging 1996 and more recently As the Lonely Fly 2017