Book - BookDetective

Name: Kaddish for an Unborn Child

Author: Imre Kertesz
Year: 1990
Rank:

Rating:

Original Rating:

Pop Rating:

Genres/categories:
Historical fiction

Purchase/reserch links:

Goodreads

LibraryThing

Amazon

ISBNs:
9781400078622
9781784872175
1400078628
1784872172

The first word in this mesmerizing novel by the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature is "No." It is how the novel's narrator, a middle-aged Hungarian-Jewish writer, answers an acquaintance who asks him if he has a child. It is the answer he gave his wife (now ex-wife) years earlier when she told him that she wanted one. The loss, longing and regret that haunt the years between those two "no"s give rise to one of the most eloquent meditations ever written on the Holocaust.

As Kertesz's narrator addresses the child he couldn't bear to bring into the world he ushers readers into the labyrinth of his consciousness, dramatizing the paradoxes attendant on surviving the catastrophe of Auschwitz. Kaddish for the Unborn Child is a work of staggering power, lit by flashes of perverse wit and fueled by the energy of its wholly original voice.
Translated by Tim Wilkinson

This book is part of the "The Holocaust series" series. Here are some other books from this series:

"Liquidation"
First published in 2003
Rank:

, Original star rating:

, Adjusted star rating:

, Pop rating:

"Fatelessness"
First published in 1973
Rank:

, Original star rating:

, Adjusted star rating:

, Pop rating: