Krall, Hanna "Chasing the King of Hearts"

Krall, Hanna "Chasing the King of Hearts" (Polish: Król kier znów na wylocie) - 2006

This was our international online book club book for May 2024.

The life story of a Jewish woman who loses all her family in the Holocaust. Except for her husband. She is sure he is still alive and she looks for him everywhere.

In the description it says this is a beautiful love story. And it is. In a way. Just not what you would usually expect from a love story. And the style is completely different. It reads like diary. But it's more than that. Quite interesting.

It's amazing what a human being can do in order to save their loved ones.

A good book about a strong woman.

Comments from members:

For me the topic of the WWII in books is very unwelcome as I have a great imagination and empathy, but in this book I really liked how the author scaled back on the emotions in the writing, not wallowing in the horrors, yet still showing very skillfully the realities of the war.

The story was interesting historically and serendipitously.

Smart choices and having a clear purpose helped make hard things easier for the lead character, while others turned the difficulties and how to survive mentally into blaming others.

From the back cover:

"An extraordinary love story, spanning 60 years, from 1939 to 2000, from the Warsaw Ghetto to Israel.

'This is the last leg of my journey. It would be silly to lose my mind now.' After the deportation of her husband to Auschwitz, Izolda Regenberg, alias Maria Pawlicka, has only one aim: to free her husband. Her race to beat fate might appear absurd to others, but not to her. In times of war and destruction she learns to trust herself.

Why Peirene chose to publish this book:

'This is a beautiful love story. A story which makes one weep for mankind. While Hanna Krall's terse prose is designed to convey the utter desperation of war, her deft touch evokes hope and a sense of homecoming.' Meike Ziervogel"

Gray, Martin "For those I loved"

Gray, Martin "For those I loved" (French: Au nom de tous les miens) - 1971

I read this book many years ago, but it is one that has never left me. The life that Martin Gray led, no, that he had to experience, was so hard. One loss after another. I don't know how he got through it. First the Warsaw ghetto, then Treblinka and later, when he found a family, a fire destroyed his whole life again.

Apparently, not everything happened exactly as described in the book. But the key data of the author's life is correct, and that's bad enough.

An impressive work.

From the back cover:

"Martin Gray was in his fourteenth year when the Nazis marched into Poland ; on his nineteenth birthday he entered Berlin with the Red Army. In the intervening years - in the Warsaw Ghetto, in the death camp at Treblinka, with the partisans and the NKVD - Martin Gray grew up in a hell on earth.

For Those I Loved is a classic account of survival against incredible and horrific odds.

Martin has come full circle since his boyhood world was turned upside down by the German invasion of Poland in 1939. Overnight, the teenage Martin and his family were immersed in the horrors of the Holocaust and held captive in the Warsaw Ghetto. It was a nightmare of brutality, starvation, and death. Martin became a clever smuggler to help his family survive - until the 'butchers' of Treblinka took his mother and brothers. Against impossible odds, Martin survived and returned to fight in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. As the Nazis incinerated the ghetto, he escaped to fight with the partisans, and then the Red Army.

After the war, Martin made his way to New York. The cunning and skills he developed during the war enabled him to learn the language and create a successful business. At 35, he retired to France with a fortune and a beautiful Dutch wife, starting a family and living in happiness and peace. But his world was shattered once again by a forest fire that engulfed his fleeing family. In a tragic repeat of history, Martin alone survived.

Martin Gray's past could be our future if we don't heed his call to be the change. In this 35th anniversary expanded edition of For Those I Loved, a book beloved by millions of readers worldwide, Martin reminds us that the past is connected to the present. Only we can ensure that history is not repeated.

Martin Gray still lives in the South of France (*) and has devoted his life to his family, writing, human rights, and environmental and cultural causes. He received the United Nations Dag Hammar-skjold Award and the Gold Medal of European Merit."

* He died in 2016, after the book was published.

Boschwitz, Ulrich Alexander "The Passenger"

Boschwitz, Ulrich Alexander "The Passenger" aka "The Fugitive" (German: Der Reisende) - 1939

This is my eighth Classic Spin and we were given #11.

I had never heard of this author when I found the book in a bookshop. But the description sounded interesting, a book one had to read. So I bought it. Apparently, this novel was first published as a translation in English as "The man who took trains" in the UK and "The Fugitive" in the US under the pseudonym John Grane. Posthumously. Because his destiny would make an interesting story, as well. As so many Jews, he couldn't get away, he was a Jew in Germany and a Nazi in other countries. So, the British interned him as "enemy alien" and sent him to Australia. When he returned to Europe, his ship was torpedoed and sank, and with it the author and his last manuscript. Let us think about people like him when we don't welcome refugees.

You can see how the protagonist changes with the circumstances he is in. How he first believes that his Arian friends will help him, how he then thinks with the money he has left he can get away, how he tries again and again to leave Germany and a certain destiny of death.

Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz was only 23 when he wrote this book but I think you can tell that he was wise beyond his age, probably for all the events he had seen and had to live through.

The book "disappeared" for several decades. I am glad it was found again.

From the back cover:

"Hailed as a remarkable literary discovery, a lost novel of heart-stopping intensity and harrowing absurdity about flight and persecution in 1930s Germany

Berlin, November 1938. Jewish shops have been ransacked and looted, synagogues destroyed. As storm troopers pound on his door, Otto Silbermann, a respected businessman who fought for Germany in the Great War, is forced to sneak out the back of his own home. Turned away from establishments he had long patronized, and fearful of being exposed as a Jew despite his Aryan looks, he boards a train.

And then another. And another . . . until his flight becomes a frantic odyssey across Germany, as he searches first for information, then for help, and finally for escape. His travels bring him face-to-face with waiters and conductors, officials and fellow outcasts, seductive women and vicious thieves, a few of whom disapprove of the regime while the rest embrace it wholeheartedly.

Clinging to his existence as it was just days before, Silbermann refuses to believe what is happening even as he is beset by opportunists, betrayed by associates, and bereft of family, friends, and fortune. As his world collapses around him, he is forced to concede that his nightmare is all too real.

Twenty-three-year-old Ulrich Boschwitz wrote The Passenger at breakneck speed in 1938, fresh in the wake of the Kristallnacht pogroms, and his prose flies at the same pace. Taut, immediate, infused with acerbic Kafkaesque humor, The Passenger is an indelible portrait of a man and a society careening out of control."

If you want to see what others were reading, have a look here.

Boom, Corrie "The Hiding Place"

Boom, Corrie ten with Sherrill, John and Elizabeth "The Hiding Place. The Triumphant Story of Corrie Ten Boom" (De Schuilplaats) - 1972

If you have read Anne Frank's "Diary of a Young Girl", you should also read this book. It's the story of a family who was hiding people like the Frank family and what happened to them.

How someone can watch these atrocities - both on the side of the enemy and of those of your own people - and still stay so positive, believe there is a meaning to all this ... that's beyond me. I am grateful that these kind of people exist and would hope that I'd react the same way when I would have to make the decision.

In any case, the ten Boom family was part of the Dutch Underground. They hid anyone who needed help, mostly Jews, and helped them leaving the country.

I especially liked the father who was such a model for his family. Here is a quote that shows it all:
"Father held the baby close, his white beard brushed its cheek, looking into the little face with eyes as blue and innocent as the baby's own. At last he looked up at the pastor. 'You say we could lose our lives for this child. I would consider that the greatest honor that could come to my family.'"

Another quote I would like to talk about:
"Strangely enough, it was not the Germans or the Japanese that people had most trouble forgiving; it was their fellow Dutchmen who had sided with the enemy."
I do understand that. A lot of the Germans or Japanese had no choice but these people had betrayed their own. Mind you, after having lived in the Netherlands for almost nineteen years now, I disagree that they were all so forgiving of the Germans, there are plenty around who still haven't forgotten.

It was quite interesting to see how they built the hiding place, how they managed to put another room into a house without anyone noticing.

Granted, the book is quite religious, Corrie ten Boom and her family were Calvinists and belonged to the Dutch Reformed Church which was very strict and very conservative. But that was part of their reason for doing what they did. In any case, the book is totally worth reading.

From the back cover:

"Corrie ten Boom stood naked with her older sister Betsie, watching a concentration camp matron beating a prisoner.' Oh, the poor woman,' Corrie cried. 'Yes. May God forgive her,' Betsie replied. And, once again, Corrie realized that it was for the souls of the brutal Nazi guards that her sister prayed. Here is a book aglow with the glory of God and the courage of a quiet Christian spinster whose life was transformed by it. A story of Christ's message and the courageous woman who listened and lived to pass it along -- with joy and triumph!"

Abarbanell, Stephan "Displaced"

Abarbanell, Stephan "Displaced" (German: Morgenland) - 2015

What a highly interesting book. I always like to learn about history and what happens in other countries. Or even what happened in my own country a long time before I was born.

Well, this book brought me both. A young Jewish woman who grew up in Palestine before it was Israel. A young woman who became a member of the resistance, fighting for their own country. But now it is 1946, the war is over and the world is not what it used to be. So many questions, so many problems. Someone is looking for his brother, doesn't believe he was killed, many books have lost their owners, who do they belong to? Nobody knows how things will go on, especially not the British who have to deal with all these Jews who want to get a visa for their protectorate. The story leads us to many stations, former concentration camps as well as few kibbuzim in Germany, we meet many people who try to organize the new world, Americans and British but also Germans.

The author manages to bring life into a dark time, his protagonist, Lilya Wasserfall, is a woman with hope, a woman with determination. The story is fascinating and engaging, it keeps you enthralled, you want to know what's going on.

This is Stephan Abarbanell's first novel. I hope he'll write more.

From the back cover:

"It is 1946, and the full horrors of the previous six years are slowly coming to light.

But in Jerusalem, Elias Lind can't accept that his brother Raphael really did die in a concentration camp. He has evidence that the scientist is still alive but, unable to search for him himself, he persuades a young member of the Jewish resistance to help.

Lilya's search for Raphael takes her from the dusty streets of Jerusalem to the heart of political London, from US-controlled Munich to an overcrowded and underfunded displaced persons camp, before leading her to the devastated shell of Berlin itself. But before long Lilya realises that she isn't the only one searching for the missing scientist; a mysterious pursuer is hot on her heels, and it soon becomes clear that Raphael's life isn't the only one in question . . ."

In the book, the protagonist mentions a few German books she read to improve her German:
Mann, Thomas "Tonio Kröger"
Kästner, Erich "Fabian"
Stifter, Adalbert "Nachsommer"
Baum, Vicki "Menschen im Hotel", "Tanzpause", "Welt ohne Sünde"

Michaels, Anne "Fugitive Pieces"

Michaels, Anne "Fugitive Pieces" - 1996

I really wanted to like this book. It is absolutely my genre and it was praised a lot. However, I wouldn't call this a tough read but nevertheless, I didn't find a closeness to the characters. A lot of things happened, obviously, but there seemed to be no action and no continuance.

More fleeing fragmented thoughts, bits and pieces thrown together. Someone trying to bring their thoughts in order but not being very lucky with it. Such a shame. This could have been a great book, the story is very promising.

What annoyed me most was that you hardly know who is talking if you don't read the introduction. But if you do read the introduction, you are given spoilers that can ruin the whole story. I hardly ever read the introduction but noticed halfway through the lecture that it was necessary in order to understand what this was all about.

I think a lot of people like it for it's poetic writing but then it shouldn't be classified as a novel.

Definitely not my book.

There were a few quotes I did like, though, the final sentence under "Anne Michaels' favourite books":
"When I was young I felt there was a mystery contained in the fact that the word 'read' was two words - both past and present tenses. This time travel is one way we hold our life in our hands."
and a quote, a Hebrew saying:
"Hold a book in your hand and you're a pilgrim at the gates of a new city."

From the back cover:

"Jakob Beer is seven years old when he is rescued from the muddy ruins of a buried village in Nazi-occupied Poland. Of his family, he is the only one who has survived. Under the guidance of the Greek geologist Athos, Jakob must steel himself to excavate the horrors of his own history.

A novel of astounding beauty and wisdom, Fugitive Pieces is a profound meditation on the resilience of the human spirit and love's ability to restore even the most damaged of hearts."

Schrobsdorff, Angelika "You Are Not Like Other Mothers"

Schrobsdorff, Angelika "You Are Not Like Other Mothers" (German: Du bist nicht so wie andre Mütter) - 1992

The life of a Jewish mother at the beginning of the last century. This book is about the author's mother Else who was not what people expected from "nice" Jewish girls. She was a very early feminist, all that against the backdrop of raising anti-Semitism and the beginning of the Second World War where most of her family members get killed.

Else moved to Bulgaria with her children, only to have to hide there, as well as the Nazis got closer everywhere.

A highly interesting story about a time that brought us so many books that it is often hard to choose which one to read. But this one is definitely worth it.

From the back cover:

"You Are Not Like Other Mothers is the story of Else Kirschner, a free spirited mother of three children. The novel spans the first half of the 20th century, from World War I through the Jewish Else’s exile in Bulgaria during World War II. Multi-layered and epic in scope, the narrative incorporates numerous sub-plots and secondary characters to provide a richly rendered portrait of 20th century Europe."

Fredriksson, Marianne "Simon and The Oaks"

Fredriksson, Marianne "Simon and The Oaks" (aka Simon's Family) (Swedish: Simon och ekarna) - 1985 

After reading "Hannah's Daughters" with two different book clubs, I always wanted to read another book by Marianne Fredriksson again. And I finally found one. I didn't regret it, a wonderful tale about a friendship that is lined with many obstacles, about a boy growing up not feeling he belongs, about a family with a secret and a country having to deal with a war that is going on all around them, just not directly in their home.

Marianne Fredriksson was a very powerful author who can tell us about a time not that long ago but still unknown to many of us. She manages to weave a plentiful story by adding a colour here and a character there, links that are not that obvious at first but get more and more certain after a while.

A lot of Scandinavian authors are known for their crime stories and I am sure they have a worthy place among the world authors of this genre. Marianne Fredriksson also deserves a place there.

From the back cover:

"Simon is an ordinary boy growing up in rural Sweden. Ordinary that is until the Second World War is declared; until he makes friends with Isak, a psychologically damaged Jewish boy who has fled with his father from Nazi Germany; and until he is told that he is adopted - that the working class couple he has assumed to be his parents are, in reality, distant relations. His biological parents had met and, with no common language, loved each other in an enchanted spot under a waterfall nine years previously.

So begins Simon's quest for self-hood: a quest which takes him through the bitter privations of the Second World War, through his military service, and through a destructive relationship with Isak's cousin recently liberated from a concentration camp. And, always in the background, his beloved step-mother watches over him, as constant as the oak trees on the cliff top that whispered their secrets to him when he was a child."

Zweig, Stefanie "Somewhere in Germany"

Zweig, Stefanie "Somewhere in Germany" (German: Irgendwo in Deutschland) - 1996

Since I reread "Nowhere in Africa" last year, I wanted to carry on and read the sequel again. I would like to add a little more than a general description, so there might be spoilers. If you have not read the book before, I refer you to my review here.

The Redlich family has returned to Germany since Walter can only work in his country. Regina finds it very hard to adjust and it's not easy to return to a country that is torn by the war and where there are still a lot of people who would rather not have them there. This is something I really don't understand. How could people, after all this time, still dislike the Jews? Shouldn't they all have felt shame, at least those that supported the Nazis? Regina meets a lot of people and they all swear they didn't know about the Holocaust and/or told her how they helped the Jews. Awful.

Regina (well, this is an almost-biography by the author, so Regina really is Stephanie Zweig herself) grows up and becomes a journalist. It is really interesting to see the story unfold, see how Regina and Max grow up and their parents grow older. I will read this book again in a couple of years, of that I am sure.

Stephanie Zweig has written many other good books, none of them translated into English, unfortunately.

From the back cover:

"Somewhere in Germany is the sequel to the acclaimed Nowhere in Africa, which was turned into the Oscar-winning film of the same name. This novel traces the return of the Redlich family to Germany after their nine-year exile in Kenya during World War II. In Africa, Walter had longed for his homeland and dreamed of rebuilding his life as a lawyer, yet ultimately he and his family - wife Jettel, daughter Regina, and baby Max - realize that Germany seems as exotic and unwelcoming to them in 1947 as Kenya had seemed in 1938. Hunger and desperation are omnipresent in bombed-out Frankfurt, and this Jewish family - especially Regina, who misses Africa the most - has a hard time adjusting to their new circumstances. Yet slowly the family adapts to their new home amidst the ruins.

In Frankfurt, Regina matures into a woman and, though her parents want her to marry an upstanding Jewish man, her love life progresses in its own idiosyncratic fashion. She develops a passion for art and journalism and begins her professional career at a Frankfurt newspaper. Walter at last finds professional success as a lawyer, but never quite adjusts to life in Frankfurt, recalling with nostalgia his childhood in Upper Silesia and his years in Africa. Only his son Max truly finds what Walter had hoped for: a new homeland in Germany.

Although the Redlichs receive kindness from strangers, they also learn anti-Semitism still prevails in post-Nazi Germany. They partake in the West German “economic miracle” with their own home, a second-hand car, and the discovery of television, but young Max’s discovery of the Holocaust revives long-buried memories. Rich in memorable moments and characters, this novel portrays the reality of postwar German society in vivid and candid detail."

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2021 and in 2025.

Schimmel, Betty "To See You Again"

Schimmel, Betty with Gabriel, Joyce "To See You Again. A True Story of Love in a Time of War" - 1999

A lot of my friends will say "not another Holocaust survival story". And if that's not your cup of tea, don't touch it. However, this is a remarkable account of a strong woman, of several strong women indeed, who survived the most awful ordeal anyone can survive and grow stronger through this survival. I know Betty Schimmel didn't write this book alone, she had a helper. But that doesn't change the story she tells. It is heartbreaking.

We can all learn from people like Betty Schimmel, not to give up even when everything looks hopeless. A good read. Almost like "The Diary of a Young Girl" by Anne Frank with a happy(er) ending.

Apparently, Kenneth Brannagh plans to turn this story into a movie. It should be a success.

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2026.

From the back cover:

"The sunset was breathtakingly beautiful, the bright orange sun slipping from view below the horizon as we watched from the high banks of the Danube. The sky was slashed with vivid arcs of fuchsia, purple, and gold. Suddenly I felt a chill down my spine as the last of the light fade. 'Will you always love me just as you love me now' I asked. Richie cupped my face in his hands and lightly kissed my lips, soft as a whisper. 'Always,' he promised.

With these words, Betty Markowitz and Richie Kovacs pledged their hearts to each other forever. They met as children in 1939 in Budapest, where Betty and her family had fled to escape the escalating tensions in Czechoslovakia. As teenagers, they fell in love amid the terror and uncertainty of a world at war. They planned their future together, secure in the belief that their love could survive anything, even Hitler.

Then, in March 1944, the Germans invaded Hungary.

Separated from Richie by the Nazis, Betty vowed that someday she would find him again. Even when her mother, sister, brother, and she were forcibly marched from Hungary and imprisoned in a concentration camp, where they endured unimaginable horrors, she never gave up hope. In all the years that followed - through Liberation, through her marriage to Otto Schimmel, an Auschwitz survivor who promised her a new life in America, through the joy and struggle of raising her own three children - Betty never forgot her first love.

Then in 1975 she returned to Budapest and saw someone across a crowded room.

A story that unfolds with all the suspense and drama of a novel, it is all the more compelling because it's true. To See You Again follows Betty Schimmel on her journey from independent young girl on the threshold of adulthood to Holocaust survivor to wife and mother at a pivotal crossroads. When Betty returned to Budapest, she faced the most agonizing choice of her life. It would force her to question everything, from her values to her desires to the meaning of betrayal. Confronted with a secret that had been held for over a quarter of a century, this woman who had already suffered grievous losses would now make a surprising discovery about herself and her capacity for love and forgiveness."

Zweig, Stefanie "Nowhere in Africa"

Zweig, Stefanie "Nowhere in Africa" (German: Nirgendwo in Afrika) - 1995

I reread "Nowhere in Africa" by Stephanie Zweig with an online book group, created by a friend for some of her friends on Facebook. Everybody suggested a book and then would "lead" through the discussion with some questions.

If you have not read the book before, I refer you to my review here.

If you have read it, you might want to go through my questions and maybe add a thought or two to it. Here they are:

1.    What do you think of Jettel, the mother? Do you think there were many people in Germany who didn't see what was coming?

2.    What about Regina? How do you think she will be feeling when she is being transplanted to Germany after the war?

3.    Walter, the father, is mostly described as a caring father who just wants to bring his family through the war. In retrospect, this was the right decision. What do you think he would have thought if the war hadn't been like it was, if he'd transplanted his family for nothing?

4.    Did you know that "Nowhere in Africa" is almost a memoir of the author Stefanie Zweig, that all this happened to her family, that she does have a younger brother called Max who was born in Africa, for example? If you did, how did that make you feel during the read. If not, do you think differently about the novel now?

5.    Do you have the feeling that growing up in Africa has influenced the author's style? Did you feel her storytelling had a specific flow?

6.    What do you think about the other characters, mainly Walter Süßkind and Lilly and Oskar Hahn but, even more important, Owuor? How do you think Walter and Owuor influence each other and change the other's life?

7.    This book was made into a film and received the prize at the 75th Academy Awards in 2003 for Best Foreign Language Film. If you saw the film, how do you think it compared to the book? What would you have done differently if you'd been the director?

8.    I like to learn something with every book I read. Whether you belong to those readers or not, what did you learn from the book?

9.    Any other subjects I haven't touched that you would like to discuss?

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2021 and in 2025.

Modiano, Patrick "La Place de l'Étoile"

Modiano, Patrick "La Place de l'Étoile" (French: La Place de l'Étoile) - 1968

An interesting book, certainly a challenging book. The author was quite young, only 23 years old, when he wrote this, his first book that led eventually to him receiving the Nobel Price for Literature.

Patrick Modiano starts with a little story which could be called a joke if it wasn't so sad:
"In June 1942, a German officer approaches a young man and says: 'Excuse me, monsieur, where is the Place de l’Etoile?' The young man points to the left side of his chest. - A Jewish History". The young man is, of course, alluding to the star of David that was required to be worn by all Jews rather than the famous place in Paris.

Then he carries on talking about his protagonist, Raphaël Schlemilovitch and his way of surviving or not surviving the holocaust. It took me a while to realize what he was doing. He is living the lives of many and has an almost magic realistic but certainly an immensely sarcastic style in describing this. We meet many famous Jews and non-Jews who have made history both past and present in his stories.

I don't know whether this is the main book why the author was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature and whether this is a typical novel by him but I certainly would not classify it as an "easy read". Still, if you are interested in this history, you might enjoy it.

From the back cover:

"The first novel by the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature 2014, which with The Night Watch and Ring Roads forms a trilogy of the Occupation.

This astonishing first novel by one of France's greatest living writers was among the earliest to seriously question both wartime collaboration in France and the myths of the Gaullist era. The epigraph reads:

In June 1942 a German officer goes up to a young man and says: 'Excuse me, monsieur, where is La Place de l'Étoile?' The young man points to the star on his chest.

The narrator of this wild and whirling satire is a hero on the edge, who imagines himself in Paris under the German Occupation. Through his mind stream a thousand different possible existences, where sometimes the Jew is king, sometimes a martyr, and where tragedy disguises itself as farce. Real and fictional characters from Maurice Sachs and Drieu La Rochelle, Marcel Proust and the French Gestapo, Captain Dreyfus and the Petainist admirals, to Freud, Hitler and Eva Braun spin past our eyes. But at the centre of this whirligig is La Place de l'Étoile, the geographical and moral centre of Paris, the capital of grief.

With La Place de l'Étoile Patrick Modiano burst onto the Parisian literary scene in 1968, winning two literary prizes, and preparing the way for the next two books - The Night Watch and Ring Roads - in what is regarded as his trilogy of the Occupation."

Patrick Modiano received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2014 "for the art of memory with which he has evoked the most ungraspable human destinies and uncovered the life-world of the occupation".

I contribute to this page: Read the Nobels and you can find all my blogs about Nobel Prize winning authors and their books here.

Seth, Vikram "Two Lives"

Seth, Vikram "Two Lives" - 2005

I had already read two novels by Vikram Seth before, "A Suitable Boy" and "An Equal Music", both of which are completely different but really good.

In this work, the author describes not just the life of his great-uncle and his Jewish wife, he describes his own life, he describes the life and death of ordinary people during the holocaust as well as the terrible fate of the Jews. But he also describes life in India pre- and post independence. Quite an undertaking.

Vikram Seth makes it extremely easy to follow the paths of Shanti and Henny, their families and friends through a whole century and several continents. He doesn't leave out any detail, relying on personal experience as well as interviews and old letters.

We get to know the three characters, yes we have to include the author, too, pretty well. Vikram Seth leaves no stone unturned, doesn't leave out a single character or incident that might seem too trivial at the moment but is important later on. We get a good insight into life before and during World War II both in Germany and in England, about the war itself and about the concentration camps. Also, and I found that even more interesting as we don't often get to read about it, life after the war in both England and Germany.

What can I say, a fantastic book. If the author ever writes another biography, I should gladly read it. Actually, I am going to put all his books on my wishlist.

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2025.

From the back cover:

"Two Lives is the story of a century and of a love affair across a racial divide. It tells of the extraordinary lives of Vikram Seth's great-uncle Shanti, brought up in India and sent to Berlin in the 1930s to study, and of his great-aunt Henny, whose German-Jewish family took Shanti in as a lodger. What follows is an astonishing tapestry of India, the Third Reich and the Second World War, Auschwitz and the Holocaust, Israel and Palestine, Post-war Germany and modern Britian."

A quote from the book which the author found at the Holocaust Memorial Arch in the Memorial garden in Hendon Park, London:
"Lezikaron. The meaning refers tot he importance of looking forward as well as remembering the past."

Roth, Philip "The Ghost Writer"

Roth, Philip "The Ghost Writer" - 1979

Why I have not read any books by this extraordinary writer is a big mystery to me.

What can I say, I really loved the book. I wondered whether this book was partly autobiographical, it certainly had tendencies that sounded like it. I liked the alternate history part, a genre I cherish a lot.

A young writer meets an older writer, his writing hero. And there he meets an interesting young girl who seems to have a fascinating past. That is the basic story. However, it's the way Philip Roth tells the story that makes it interesting, makes you want to know all about Nathan Zuckerman, the young author, and his life, makes you want to read the whole series.

Within just 180 pages, Philip Roth manages to give an overview of Jewish history, the Holocaust, Anne Frank's diary, and life in the United States in the fifties, especially the situations of the Jews at the time.

If you like the first sentences: "It was the last daylight hour of a December afternoon more than twenty years ago--I was twenty-three, writing and publishing my first short stories, and like many a Bildungsroman hero before me, already contemplating my own massive Bildungsroman--when I arrived at his hideaway to meet the great man. The clapboard farmhouse was at the end of an unpaved road twelve hundred feet up in the Berkshires, yet the figure who emerged from the study to bestow a ceremonious greeting wore a gabardine suit, a knitted blue tie clipped to a white shirt by an unadorned silver clasp, and well-brushed ministerial black shoes that made me think of him stepping down from a shoeshine stand rather than from the high altar of art", you will like the whole book. His writing is beautiful.

I will definitely read more by this author, especially since I have ordered the second one in the series (Zuckerman Unbound) right away at my library already.

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2025.

From the back cover:

"Exactly twenty years ago, Philip Roth made his debut with Goodbye, Columbus, a book that immediately announced the presence of a major new talent. The Ghost Writer, his eleventh book, begins with a young writer's search, twenty years ago, for the spiritual father who will comprehend and validate his art, and whose support will justify his inevitable flight from a loving but conventionally constricting Jewish middle-class home.  Nathan Zuckerman's quest brings him to E.I. Lonoff, whose work--exquisite parables of desire restrained--Nathan much admires.  Recently discovered by the literary world after decades of obscurity, Lonoff continues to live as a semi-recluse in rural Massachusetts with his wife, Hope, scion of an old New England family, whom the young immigrant married thirty-five years before.  At the Lonoffs' Nathan also meets Amy Bellette, a haunting young woman of indeterminate foreign background.  He is instantly infatuated with the attractive and gifted girl, and at first takes her for the aging writer's daughter.  She turns out to be a former student of Lonoff's--and may also have been Lonoff's mistress.  Zuckerman, with his imaginative curiosity, wonders if she could be the paradigmatic victim of Nazi persecution.  If she were, it might change his life.

A figure of fun to the New York literati, a maddeningly single-minded isolate to his wife, teacher-father-savior to Amy, Lonoff embodies for an enchanted Nathan the ideal of artistic integrity and independence.  Hope sees Amy (as does Amy herself) as Lonoff's last chance to break out of his self-imposed constraints, and she bitterly offers to leave him to the younger woman, a chance that, like one of his own heroes, Lonoff resolutely continues to deny himself.  Nathan, although in a state of youthful exultation over his early successes, is still troubled by the conflict between two kinds of conscience: tribal and family loyalties, on the one hand, and the demands of fiction, as he sees them, on the other.  A startling imaginative leap to the beginnings of a kind of wisdom about the unreckoned consequences of art.

Shocking, comic, and sad by turns, The Ghost Writer is the work of a major novelist in full maturity."

I have read "Zuckerman Unbound" in the meantime.

Philip Roth received the Booker International Prize in 2011 and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 1980.

Hessel, Stéphane "Time for Outrage!"

Hessel, Stéphane "Time for Outrage!" (French: Indignez-vous!) - 2011 

This is probably one of the shortest "books" I ever read. It would not even go as a short story for many people. Just about 30 pages.

Stéphane Hessel is 93 years old and he was a member of Résistance during the war.

When he published his book in France, it caused a lot of attention. The author encourages us to be outraged. He has seen what happens when people aren't. He encourages us to stand up not only to dictatorship but before that to the business world, the banks, the financers, to fight for the minorities, against pollution and therefore for humanity and our earth.

I think everybody should read this, it doesn't take long but could change the world for the better if we all acted accordingly.

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2025.

From the back cover:

"This controversial, impassioned call-to-arms for a return to the ideals that fuelled the French Résistance has sold millions of copies worldwide since its publication in France in October 2010. Rejecting the dictatorship of world financial markets and defending the social values of modern democracy, 93-old Stéphane Hessel - Résistance leader, concentration camp survivor, and former UN speechwriter - reminds us that life and liberty must still be fought for, and urges us to reclaim those essential rights we have permitted our governments to erode since the end of World War II."

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.

Binet, Laurent "HHhH"

Binet, Laurent "HHhH" (French: HHhH) - 2010

"HHhH", the French title is the same as the English, the German has an addition that explains the weird letters: Himmlers Hirn heißt Heydrich. The translation: Himmler's Brain is called Heydrich.

The story is not about Hitler or Himmler but about Reinhard Heydrich, a high ranking German Nazi officer and Jozef Gabčík, a Slovak soldier, and Jan Kubiš, a Czech solider and their "Operation Anthropoid" whose goal was Heydrich's assassination.

Heydrich was a member of the SD (Sicherheitsdienst = security service, part of the SS). The least-known and the most sinister of all Nazi organizations. Including the Gestapo. He didn't just'invent' the yellow star to be worn by all Jews, he also designed the gas chambers. Needless to say, he was considered the most dangerous man in the Third Reich, they called him the "Hangman of Prague", the "Butcher" and the "Blond Beast". Not really a title any sane person would want to achieve.

Laurent Binet has found a unique way of combining the telling of a non-fiction story, part of an autobiography and making that into a novel. Apparently, he calls it the infranovel. Interesting way to get through the subject, great way to get the reader accustomed to the characters in the book. It might need some getting used to him jumping from the first to the third person but I really love his style.

Even if you don't want to read any more about WWII or the Nazis, this is one book you should give a try. There is a lot of heart in it and it is very informative at the same time.

He starts with: "Let me tell you a story. A true story. A story that you might know, but only in the passing." and that is how he carries on, talking to the reader as if he were in the same room.

And I shall finish with another quote:
"Memory is of no use to the remembered, only to those who remember." Therefore, let us remember.

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2025.

From the back cover:

"'HHhH: 'Himmlers Hirn heisst Heydrich', or 'Himmler’s brain is called Heydrich'. The most dangerous man in Hitler’s cabinet, Reinhard Heydrich was known as the 'Butcher of Prague'. He was feared by all and loathed by most. With his cold Aryan features and implacable cruelty, Heydrich seemed indestructible - until two men, a Slovak and a Czech recruited by the British secret service, killed him in broad daylight on a bustling street in Prague, and thus changed the course of History.
Who were these men, arguably two of the most discreet heroes of the twentieth century? In Laurent Binet’s captivating debut novel, we follow Jozef Gabćik and Jan Kubiš from their dramatic escape of Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia to England; from their recruitment to their harrowing parachute drop into a war zone, from their stealth attack on Heydrich’s car to their own brutal death in the basement of a Prague church.

A seemingly effortlessly blend of historical truth, personal memory, and Laurent Binet’s remarkable imagination, HHhH - an international bestseller and winner of the prestigious Prix Goncourt du Premier Roman - is a work at once thrilling and intellectually engrossing, a fast-paced novel of the Second World War that is also a profound meditation on the nature of writing and the debt we owe to history."

Some of the books mentioned by the author:
Burgess, Alan "Seven Men at Daybreak"
Flaubert, Gustave "Salammbô"
Harris, Robert "Fatherland"
Sand, George "Jean Zizka" (Žižka)
Schmitt, Éric-Emmanuel "La Part de l'autre" (no translation)
Vollmann, William T. "Europe Central" 

Hamill, Pete "Snow in August"

Hamill, Pete "Snow in August" - 1998

Brooklyn, two years after World War II. An 11 year old Irish Catholic boy whose father died in battle and who lives alone with his mother befriends a Czech Rabbi and learns about Judaism and the Holocaust. Together they face racism and violence. Together with Michael, we learn about the Yiddish language, Jewish history, Jewish literature, the Jewish folkloristic Golem and - baseball.

The story is well-told, switching between the past and the present, building anticipation. You could almost read the story in a day but you don't want to say good-bye too early to the characters as you hopefully grow to love them as much as I did.

I really loved this book and would like to read more by this author.

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2025.

From the back cover:

"In the year 1947, Michael Devlin, eleven years old and 100 percent American-Irish, is about to forge an extraordinary bond with a refugee of war named Rabbi Judah Hirsch. Standing united against a common enemy, they will summon from ancient sources a power in desperately short supply in modern Brooklyn-a force that's forgotten by most of the world but is known to believers as magic."