It won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize in 2000 for the Best Book from the South-East Asia and South Pacific Region.

The novel was adapted into a feature film by the German director Julia von Heinz.

William Morrow published a movie edition of the book, retitled, "Treasure" in May 2024.

Ruth Rothwax, a successful New York business-woman, takes her 80-year-old father Edek, a Holocaust survivor living in Melbourne, back to Poland, to revisit the land of his birth.

They are also accompanied, unknown to Edek, by the ghost of the dead Nazi Rudolf Höss.