Ramona Koval is one of Australia’s most loved literary figures, thanks to her many years ruling the Radio National airwaves as the host of The Book Show. Her new book, Bloodhound: Searching for My Father is a personal story.

The daughter of Holocaust survivors, she always suspected that the man who raised her was not her biological father. One day in the 1990s, long after her mother’s death, she decides she must know the truth. A phone call leads to a photograph in the mail, then tea with strangers. Before long Koval is interrogating a nursing-home patient, meeting a horse whisperer in tropical Queensland, journeying to rural Poland, learning other languages and dealing with Kafkaesque bureaucracy, all in the hope of finding an answer.

A quest for identity recounted with Koval’s customary humour, Bloodhound takes hold of the reader and never lets go. It is a moving story of the terrible cost of war and of family secrets.

Ramona Koval is a Melbourne writer, journalist, broadcaster and editor. She has written for Age and the Australian and is the author of By the Book: A Reader’s Guide to Life and Bloodhound: Searching For My Father.