Thursday 14 November 2013

Keneally, Thomas "Schindler's Ark"

Keneally, Thomas "Schindler's Ark" - 1982

I wanted to read this book for ages and when I came across it, I took advantage of the occasion and started reading it.

Of course, everyone knows the story of Oscar Schindler and that he saved thousands of Jews from being murdered in one of the many concentration camps the Nazis had built for this purpose.

Granted, the story is heartbreaking. Even with all the information we have today about what was going on, it still is unbelievable to me how people can have acted that way. Every time I read about it. It seems impossible but we know that this has really happened.

The author did a great research and there are so many details in this book, he must have worked so hard on it.

But it is a tough book to read. Not only because of its content. I did not enjoy the way the book was written. It was not a steady flow, a lot of the story seemed so disconnected, it seemed as if the author had collected his information, thrown together what he found and mixed it all up. I don't know how else to describe this but it certainly was not well written. If it had been another subject, I probably would have given up on it after about a hundred pages. Which would have been a hundred pages too many, if it was another subject. Any newspaper article even about a boring subject is written in a more interesting way.

I will read more books about the Holocaust and World War II abut I doubt that I will read another book by Thomas Keneally.

From the back cover: "As thousands faced death in Nazi-occupied Poland an unlikely saviour materialised in the shadow of Auschwitz. Oskar Schindler was a heavy-drinking, womanising German industrialist whom the war transformed into a man with a mission. This is an incredible story of huge risks and enormous gains, as Schindler defied and outwitted the SS to protect the beleaguered Jews who worked for him."

Thomas Keneally won the Booker Prize for "Schindler's Ark" in 1982.

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