Kaddish for a Child Not Born - Hardcover

Kertesz, Imre

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0810111764 ISBN 13: 9780810111769

Publisher: Hydra Books, 1997

Synopsis

A middle-aged writer and Holocaust survivor explains to a friend why he cannot bring a child into a world that allows such horrors as the Holocaust

About this title

About the Author

Imre Kertesz is the winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize for Literature. Born in Hungary in 1929, he is one of the country's most successful postwar writers. Imprisoned in Auschwitz as a youth, Kertesz worked as a journalist and wrote musical plays to support himself before publishing Fateless, his first novel, in 1975. He is the author of Looking for a Clue, Detective Story, The British Flag, and Gallery-Diary 1961-1991.

From the Inside Flap

Imre Kertesz's mesmerizing novel is a tale of identity and memory - the story of a middle-aged man taking stock of his life in the ever-present shadow of the Holocaust. The story unfolds at a writers retreat as the narrator, a survivor of the Holocaust, explains to a friend that he cannot bring a child into a world where the Holocaust occurred and could occur again. In an intricate narrative, we learn of the narrator's myriad disappointments: his unsuccessful literary career, his failed marriage, his ex-wife's new family and children - children that could have been his own. Kaddish for a Child Not Born is a deeply introspective, poetic yet unsentimental work.

Reviews

Kertesz, a Hungarian Jew, was imprisoned in Auschwitz during his youth. His novel Fateless was translated into English in 1992 and told the story of a Jewish boy's experiences in the concentration camps and his attempts to reconcile himself to those experiences after World War II. Kaddish was originally published in Hungarian in 1990 and in German in 1992. The narrator of Kaddish is a middle-aged survivor of the Holocaust who has become a writer and literary translator. At a writer's retreat he explains to his friend, a professor of philosophy, why he can't bring a child into the world after the horror of the Holocaust. He talks of his failed marriage, of his former wife's new family and children, of his unsuccessful career, and of his Jewishness. Like the previous novel, Kaddish is brilliantly written, revealing anew the ferocious hold the Holocaust has on its survivors. George Cohen

Like its author, Hungarian novelist Kertesz (Fateless, LJ 10/15/92), the narrator in this disturbing yet lyrical novel is a writer/translator and Holocaust survivor. Middle-aged and out of harmony with everyone, including himself, he makes a final effort to explain his disconnectedness to life and his refusal to bring a child into a world where horrors like the Holocaust can occur. He recalls the pivotal events of his unhappy past in a seamless burst of introspection that is painful in its intensity and despair. For him, life is nothing more than the process of digging his own grave, using his writing tools to draw closer to death. The work is well titled, for the narrator truly mourns his unborn child(ren), and there is in his powerlessness a faint reflection of the acceptance of divine will appropriate for a mourner's kaddish. But he is a man without religious faith, numbed by the blows of fate, and his lament is not a doxology but a confession and a cry for death. Kertesz has re-created a memorable, frail life in a slender work that is occasionally rambling but always compelling in its exploration of identity and the will to survive. Recommended for all collections of contemporary literature.?Sister M. Anna Falbo, Villa Maria Coll. Lib., Buffalo, N.Y.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Hydra Books
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0810111764
• ISBN 13: 9780810111769
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 95