Obituary: Eva Jones

Eva Jones wrote her first novel, about a highly provocative 13- year-old, when she was sixty-something. Published in 1976, Thirteen was dazzlingly well reviewed, translated into several languages, and gave her the confidence to embark on several more novels, the most notable of which is a story of sibling incest, Taboo (1981). Her previous career had been chequered, to say the least; at times she had even had to read palms to make a living.

Eva (nee Solon) had met her husband, Rudolf Jonas, in 1929 while dancing the tango. They were both aged 16, attending their first dancing lessons in Berlin. One day she heard the Nazis goose-step past her school and made a rapid getaway to Paris. She had no money and no work permit, but with her beautiful soprano voice soon found work singing in an anti-Nazi cabaret in the Rue de Seine, run by Isadora Duncan's brother.

Meeting up again with Jonas, who was studying at the Ecole des Sciences Politiques, she married him in 1935 and started training to become an opera singer, but soon after the outbreak of the Second World War she was sent with other German Jewish refugees to the Camp de Gurs in the Pyrenees. When the Germans approached the camp she slipped out through the barbed wire ("I was able to because I had so little to eat") and went to Toulouse where she somehow survived by telling fortunes and selling newspapers and was once more reunited with Jonas. The authorities decided to send them to an enforced residence, at the foot of the Pyrenees.

Warned in 1942 by the BBC World Service that the Jews would be deported to Poland, they secretly left the residence and hid in Marseilles and Toulouse. The arrival of German troops in the "free zone" compelled them to run once more, and they found a path over the Pyrenees into Fascist Spain. On their arrival, after a 36-hour walk, they were incarcerated twice, first with thieves and murderers, which she described as "an adventure", then with political prisoners, an experience "which nearly finished me". The British consulate helped them to escape and Eva was taken to Gibraltar and her husband to Lisbon. Once again they were reunited, this time in Britain.

Settling in Hampstead with her husband (whose name was altered to Jones while serving in the Forces), Eva taught German for many years and wrote poetry which she recited in pubs. Then Olwyn Hughes advised her to write a novel. "But I am too old," said Eva."I'm in my sixties now." Olwyn snapped: "You are not old at all. You are just 13." Inspired by this remark, Eva promptly went off and wrote her gorgeous first book, Thirteen. To introduce it she selected a quote by Margot von Sydow: "The soul does not age."

No words could have been more appropriate for Eva, whose soul flashed impatiently out of her eyes and who scorned resignation. She went on writing books, including Malou (1982), the story of a gifted singer who refuses to recognise her talents. She suffered a severe stroke in 1988, which meant that three of her novels are still waiting for a posthumous publisher.

Eva Solon (Eva Jones), novelist: born Berlin 27 July 1913; married 1935 Rudolf Jonas (one daughter); died London 17 April 1996.