Trieste - Hardcover

Dasa Drndic

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0857050222 ISBN 13: 9780857050229

Publisher: Maclehose, 2011

Synopsis

Haya Tedeschi sits alone in Gorizia, north-eastern Italy, surrounded by a basket of photographs and newspaper clippings. Now an old woman, she waits to be reunited after sixty-two years with her son, fathered by an S.S. officer and stolen from her by the German authorities during the War as part of Himmler's clandestine 'Lebensborn' project, which strove for a 'racially pure' Germany. Haya's reflection on her Catholicized Jewish family's experiences deals unsparingly with the massacre of Italian Jews in the concentration camps of Trieste. Her obsessive search for her son leads her to photographs, maps and fragments of verse, to testimonies from the Nuremberg trials and interviews with second-generation Jews, as well as witness accounts of atrocities that took place on her doorstep. A broad collage of material is assembled, and the lesser-known horror of Nazi occupation in northern Italy is gradually unveiled. Written in immensely powerful language, and employing a range of astonishing conceptual devices, Trieste is a novel like no other. Dasa Drndic has produced a shattering contribution to the literature of our twentieth-century history.

About this title

Book Description

HMH hardcover, 2014, previous ISBN: 978-0-547-72514-7

From the Back Cover

“Splendid and absorbing . . . [Drndic] is writing to witness, and to make the pain stick . . . These dense and satisfying pages capture the crowdedness of memory.” — New York Times Book Review
 
Haya Tedeschi sits alone in Gorizia, in northeastern Italy, surrounded by a basket of photographs and newspaper clippings. Now an old woman, she waits to be reunited after sixty-two years with her son, fathered by an SS officer and stolen from her by the German authorities as part of Himmler’s clandestine Lebensborn project.

Haya reflects on her Catholicized Jewish family’s experiences, in a narrative that deals unsparingly with the massacre of Italian Jews in the concentration camps of Trieste. Her obsessive search for her son leads her to photographs, maps, and fragments of verse, to testimonies from the Nuremberg trials and interviews with second-generation Jews, and to eyewitness accounts of atrocities that took place on her doorstep. From this broad collage of material and memory arises the staggering chronicle of Nazi occupation in northern Italy.
 
“Although this is fiction, it is also a deeply researched historical documentary . . . It is a masterpiece.” — A. N. Wilson, Financial Times
 
“A book of events that have made the last century infamous for the ages, a book that, if it moves you as it moved me, you will have to set down now and then, to breathe." — Alan Cheuse, NPR
 
DAŠA DRNDIC is a distinguished Croatian novelist, playwright, and literary critic. She spent some years teaching in Canada as an immigrant and gained an M.A. in theater and communications as part of the Fulbright program. She taught in the Department of Social Sciences at the University of Rijeka.
 
ELLEN ELIAS-BURSAC is the leading translator of Serbo-Croatian writing into English.

Edition details

• Publisher: Maclehose
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0857050222
• ISBN 13: 9780857050229
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 432