The Oasis: A Memoir of Love and Survival in a Concentration Camp - Hardcover

Popescu, Petru

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312278691 ISBN 13: 9780312278694

Publisher: St Martins Pr, 2001

Synopsis

Details the powerful and poignant story of Mirek Friedman, a freedom fighter in the Czech underground, and Blanka Davidovich, who first met during World War II in the Dachau 3b camp, and whose love became a symbol of hope during a time of war.

About this title

About the Author:

Petru Popescu defected from Ceausescu's Romania in the 1970s. His Amazon Beaming and Almost Adam were international bestsellers, while his autobiography The Return received high critical acclaim. He is married to Mirek and Blanka's daughter Iris and they have two children, Chloe and Adam.

Mirek and Blanka live near the Popescus in Beverly Hills, California.

From Publishers Weekly:

With historical sweep and accuracy, and a happy ending, this unique Holocaust memoir simultaneously elicits thrills and disquietude. Novelist and memoirist Popescu (Amazon Beaming) has rewritten the memoirs of his parents-in-law, Mirek Friedman and Blanka Davidovich, and fashioned their story of falling in love during and marrying after WWII into a cohesive narrative of interspersed first-person chapters. Their individual stories are unique and riveting: Blanka moved through various camps and job assignments, witnessing horror, enduring separation from her family and finding safety in carefully and continually breaking rules and asserting herself. Mirek, a political prisoner and an able technician who managed to keep his real Jewish identity hidden, survived the camps by doing maintenance work and defusing bombs for the SS. Their descriptions of their affair, conducted under excruciating circumstances, makes palpable their hope of surviving to make a future together. The drama unfurls intently and powerfully, filled with significant moments and insights Blanka's remembrances and contemplation of shtetl life; Mirek's attempt to smuggle a radio into the camp that gets him interrogated. In an afterword, Popescu explains how he searched for a narrative voice that would encompass both of his subjects (as well as his other background research); yet because of his curious, rather novelistic construction, Blanka's and Mirek's voices seem disconcertingly uniform. But by the end, their valor and their enthralling, remarkable determination to shape their own fates supersedes any distracting stylistic flaws.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: St Martins Pr
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0312278691
• ISBN 13: 9780312278694
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 355