Where Memory Leads: My Life

Saul Friedlander

ISBN 10: 1590518098 / ISBN 13: 9781590518090

Published by Other Press LLC, 2016

About this Item

Forty years after his acclaimed, poignant first memoir, Friedl¢nder returns with Where Memory Leads, bridging the gap between the ordeals of his childhood and his present-day towering reputation in the field of Holocaust studies. Friedl¢nder's initial loyalty to Israel turns into a lifelong fascination with Jewish life and history. This memoir led Friedl¢nder to reflect on the events that led him to devote 16 years of his life to writing his Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece, The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945 (W&N, 2008).

Seller Inventory # 00105806691

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Where Memory Leads: My Life
• Publisher: Other Press LLC
• Publication Date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1590518098
• ISBN 13: 9781590518090
• Binding: Hardback
• Condition: Good

About this title

Synopsis

In this sequel to the classic work of Holocaust literature When Memory Comes, a Pulitzer Prize–winning historian returns to memoir to recount this tale of intellectual coming-of-age on three continents.
 
Forty years after his acclaimed, poignant first memoir, Friedländer returns with Where Memory Leads: My Life, bridging the gap between the ordeals of his childhood and his present-day towering reputation in the field of Holocaust studies. After abandoning his youthful conversion to Catholicism, he rediscovers his Jewish roots as a teenager and builds a new life in Israeli politics.

Friedländer’s initial loyalty to Israel turns into a lifelong fascination with Jewish life and history. He struggles to process the ubiquitous effects of European anti-Semitism while searching for a more measured approach to the Zionism that surrounds him. Friedländer goes on to spend his adulthood shuttling between Israel, Europe, and the United States, armed with his talent for language and an expansive intellect. His prestige inevitably throws him up against other intellectual heavyweights. In his early years in Israel, he rubs shoulders with the architects of the fledgling state and brilliant minds such as Gershom Sholem and Carlo Ginzburg, among others.

Most important, this memoir led Friedländer to reflect on the wrenching events that lead him to devote sixteen years of his life to writing his Pulitzer Prize–winning masterpiece, The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939–1945.

About the Author

Saul Friedländer is an award-winning Israeli-American historian and currently a professor of history (emeritus) at UCLA. He was born in Prague to a family of German-speaking Jews, grew up in France, and lived in hiding during the German occupation of 1940–1944. His historical works have received great praise and recognition, including the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction for his book The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939–1945.