Books for Prep | |
 Dewey Decimal Number: 894.511334 EAN: 9780810110243 ISBN: 0810110245 Label: Northwestern University Press Manufacturer: Northwestern University Press Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 191 Publication Date: 1992-10 Publisher: Northwestern University Press Studio: Northwestern University Press Related Items: Alternate Versions: Click to Display Browse for similar items by category: Click to Display Editorial Review: Product Description: One of Publishers Weekly's Fifty Best Books of 1992 Fateless is a moving and disturbing novel about a Hungarian Jewish boy’s experiences in German concentration camps and his attempts to reconcile himself to those experiences after the war. Upon his return to his native Budapest still clad in his striped prison clothes, fourteen-year-old George Koves senses the indifference, even hostility, of people on the street. His former neighbors and friends urge him to put the ordeal out of his mind, while a sympathetic journalist refers to the camps as "the lowest circle of hell." The boy can relate to neither cliche and is left to ponder the meaning of his experience alone. George's response to his experience is curiously ambivalent. In the camps he tries to adjust to his ever-worsening situation by imputing human motives to his inhumane captors. By imposing his logic--that of a bright, sensitive, though in many ways ordinary teenager - he maintains a precarious semblance of normalcy. Once freed, he must contend with the "banality of evil" to which he has become accustomed: when asked why he uses words like "naturally," "undeniably," and "without question" to describe the most horrendous of experiences, he responds, "In the concentration camp it was natural." Without emotional or spiritual ties to his Jewish heritage and rejected by his country, he ultimately comes to the conclusion that neither his Hungarianness nor his Jewishness was really at the heart of his fate: rather, there are only "given situations, and within these, further givens." Average Rating:
 Rating:  - The Holocaust, Up Close and PersonalI obtained this book because my maiden name is Kertesz, and although it is a common name in Hungary, I wondered if the author might be related to my father's family. But the author is Jewish, although his character in the book is a secular Jew, and I am not. Jewish, that is. Unless of course, Like former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, I really am. The book is a first person narration by a teen-age boy who, during World War II, is sent to Aushwitz, then to Buchenwald. He tells ... Read More Rating:  - Flowers in the RubbleThis novel didn't do for me what it obviously has done for many other reviewers. It is a meticulously told tale, oddly mundane, perhaps lacking the narrative drive readers seek. The author goes about finding life in the death camps to which he has been sent. The book is not in the least depressing. It is to some degree inspiring, in so far as the narrator is in fact able to find life where others have found death. He is relentlessly optimistic. Told from a child's point of view, the story tracks a ... Read More Rating: - Utterly harrowing, shocking experience, packed with humility and humanitySome writers try to shock. At least it often seems that they embark upon a novel with that in mind. They create books set in times of conflict, amid war or pestilence, where the context is vivid, horrific or even repulsive. And often it is so well known that we engage with the setting, the context or scenario, rather than the plight of the characters. Or sometimes writers deliberately try to portray the unsavoury, often attempting to present sadistic brainlessness in a form that suggests anti-hero, ... Read More Rating: - disturbing accountI have always been very interested in how people can cope with/mentally survive atrocities like the holocaust. The camps affect my own deepest fears. I always think I wouldnt have lasted a day in such a place. It must have been hell there. Somehow, although the atrocities he describes are still hellish, this book gives me hope that in any situation you (me) can live, and that there's nothing to be afraid of. Things just are. There are few books that have impressed me so much as this one. ... Read More Rating: - Easy to read dispite the difficult SubjectA difficult subject to say the least is handled in such a way as to make the reader feel that they lived it too. The writing is crisp and clear in its desciption and it drewas you right into the story. 
In association with Amazon.com | |