An entirely new voice and new perspective on the Holocaust. This memoir is shocking, elegant, sardonic, humane, and meticulously told. The details of An entirely new voice and new perspective on the Holocaust. This memoir is shocking, elegant, sardonic, humane, and meticulously told. The details of daily life. The pettiness. The competing like animals for a scrap of horse fat, the scrabbling to be the first to steal the underwear from a man who has just died. The occasional bright dazzle of kindness. The uselessness of kindness. The necessity of kindness. The many ways a man can face death. The many ways a man's physical body can fail. It's an upending experience to read this memoir and to realize there is so much more to be said about the death camps. Debreczeni is bearing witness to the same lived experience as Levi and Wiesel, who between them wrote the first, great, defining works about the Holocaust to be translated into English, published many decades ago. What Debreczeni noticed, who he was as a person and what he chose to record, is so different. I read this as audiobook: Laurence Dobiesz's narration is masterful....more
This novel depressed me deeply. Even so I loved it for presenting a dystopian vision that comes very close to metaphorical truth. And for all that, itThis novel depressed me deeply. Even so I loved it for presenting a dystopian vision that comes very close to metaphorical truth. And for all that, it's also remarkably funny. And darn, I want to read it again right now after reading Lorde by João Gilberto Noll, a book that has many parallels to this novel. But in September I gave it to a friend whom I knew would love it. Thus proving the law of book physics once more, that not too long after you give a book away you will need it desperately....more
unnervingly unsentimental. I was shaken by the ending. I was shaken by the whole thing. It's bearable to read, though, because of the utterly adolesceunnervingly unsentimental. I was shaken by the ending. I was shaken by the whole thing. It's bearable to read, though, because of the utterly adolescent voice in which it's written--the voice of a boy too young to see the whole terrible picture. He can sense that there is something really big and monstrous happening all around him, but he can't quite grasp it, or share it with us readers, because he is too wrapped up in the daily miracle of his own survival. The voice never gets bigger than a single person's experience. ...more
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