Chasing the King of Hearts by Hanna Krall

November 20, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – print. Translated from the Polish by Philip Boehm. Peirene Press, 2013. Originally published 2006. 176 pgs. Purchased. The title of this novella comes from the actions of the story’s main character, Izolda Regenberg, who is singularity driven to chase down her “King of Hearts”, her husband, Shayek. As the situation in the Warsaw ghetto grew more desperate, Izolda hatched a plan for herself, Shayek, and his parents and sister to hide in Polish homes outside the ghetto. Only […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Europe, Fiction, Genocide, Holocaust, Peirene Press, Poland, Polish, Translated • Tags: Hanna Krall, Philip Boehm

This Place Holds No Fear by Monika Held

July 8, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – Kindle edition. Translated from the German by Anne Posten. Haus Publishing, 2015. Originally published 2013. 272 pgs. Purchased.  In 1964, a Viennese man named Heiner is called to Frankfurt to testify at the war crimes trial of former SS officials and guards from Auschwitz. Heiner was deported to Auschwitz in April 1942 for his membership in the Austrian Communist Party, and his testimony about typing death records in the prisoner’s infirmary is crucial to the prosecutor’s case. As […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, 20BooksofSummer, Europe, Fiction, Genocide, German, Germany, Holocaust, Poland, Translated • Tags: Monika Held

Mischling by Affinity Konar

April 8, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – print. Lee Boudreaux Books, 2016. 344 pgs. Purchased. In 1944, twelve-year-old twin sisters named Pearl and Stasha Zagorski are deported to Auschwitz with their mother and grandfather. Desperate to save them, their mother seizes on the sight of triplets being led away from the cattle cars by a doctor in a white lab coat, dragging the girls out from under their grandfather’s coat and presenting them to the first guard she sees. Their mother doesn’t know – she […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Europe, Fiction, Genocide, Holocaust, Poland • Tags: Affinity Konar

Last Train to Istanbul by Ayşe Kulin

March 13, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – Kindle edition. Translated from the Turkish by John W. Baker. AmazonCrossing, 2013. Originally published 2002. 395 pgs. Free download. Prior to the outbreak of World War II, Selva married Rafael Alfandari, a Jewish man whose family settled in Turkey after being expelled from Spain in 1492. Neither the Alfandari family nor Selva’s parents, Fazil Resat Paşa and Leman Hanim, support the marriage and, after being cutoff, Selva and Rafael flee to Paris in the hopes of finding a […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Europe, Fiction, France, Genocide, Holocaust, Middle East, ReadDiverse, Translated, Turkish • Tags: Ayşe Kulin

Hitler’s American Model by James Q. Whitman

February 6, 2019 by Christina

Nonfiction – print. Princeton University Press, 2017. 224 pgs. Library.  The title of Whitman’s book is bold, and it immediately caught my attention while browsing the shelves at a local bookstore. It was hard to pass over a book with the subtitle “The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law”, and I only managed to put it back on the shelf after assuring myself that the local public library had a copy available. The Holocaust professors I had […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Europe, Genocide, Germany, Holocaust, Nonfiction, North America, United States • Tags: James Q. Whitman

The Drowned and the Saved by Primo Levi

October 16, 2018 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. Translated from the Italian by Raymond Rosenthal. Vintage International, 1989. Originally published 1986. 203 pgs. Purchased. In Levi’s last book before his death, he sets out to examine the concepts of forgiveness, guilt, and memory in the context of his experiences as a prisoner at Auschwitz. He includes replies to his memoir from Germans, who struggle with how they should feel in light of what their parents did, and his reaction to children and adults from around […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Europe, Genocide, Holocaust, Italian, Italy, Nonfiction, Poland, Translated • Tags: Primo Levi

Edith’s Story by Edith Velmans

August 12, 2018 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. Bantum, 2001. Originally published 1998. 256 pgs. Gift from my mom. Subtitled “The True Story of a Young Girl’s Courage and Survival During World War II”, Velmans’ story begins in the 1950s with the birth of her twin daughters at a hospital in the Netherlands. She shares her hospital room with Miep Gies, the woman who hid Anne Frank and her family from the Nazis and returned Anne’s diary to her father at the end of the […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, 20BooksofSummer, Europe, Genocide, Holocaust, Nonfiction • Tags: Edith Velmans

Poland by James A. Michener

September 18, 2017 by Christina

Fiction — Kindle edition. Random House, 2014. Originally published 1983. 688 pgs. Library copy. Covering eight centuries of Polish history, Michener’s novel begins in the then-present day of 1981 with a sit down between the fictional Minister of Agriculture of communist Poland, Szymon Bukowski, and the leader of the farmers, Janko Buk, who are operating same vain as the Solidarity movement occurring in Gdansk. Bukowski and Buk come to realize their family history — and, in fact, the history of Poland […]

Categories: 2017 Reads, Chunkster, Europe, Fiction, Genocide, Holocaust, Poland • Tags: James A. Michener

Schindler’s List by Thomas Keneally

January 13, 2016 by Christina

Fiction — print. Touchstone, 1993. Originally published 1982. 400 pgs. Purchased. Winner of the 1982 Man Booker Prize and adapted into a film in 1993 produced by Steven Spielberg, Keneally’s novel recounts the efforts of Oskar Schindler, a Czechoslovakia-born German who saved over 1,100 Jewish workers from the Nazi concentration camps by employing them in his factory in Krakow, Poland. As a member of the Nazi Party and an ethnic German from Hitler’s prized Sudetenland, Schindler had the credentials necessary […]

Categories: 2016 Reads, Europe, Fiction, Genocide, Holocaust, Poland • Tags: Thomas Keneally

Suspended Sentences by Patrick Modiano

April 8, 2015 by Christina

Fiction – print. Translated from the French by Mark Polizzotti. Yale University Press, 2014. 213 pgs. Library copy. Like many who read solely in English, the announcement that Modiano won the 2014 Nobel Prize for Literature left me a bit confounded. I have never heard of the author and never, to my recollection, seen a review for his work on one of the many book blogs I religiously read. Journalists and bloggers alike blamed the lack of awareness for his […]

Categories: 2015 Reads, Europe, Fiction, France, French, Genocide, Holocaust, Nobel Prize, Short Stories, Translated • Tags: Patrick Modiano

MetaMaus by Art Spiegelman

November 17, 2014 by Christina

Nonfiction — print. Pantheon, 2011. 300 pgs. Library copy. This companion to Spiegelman’s Pulitzer-winning Maus contains one long interview with the author addressing the questions he commonly receives about his work – Why the Holocaust? Why mice? Why comics? – and explores the impact the novel has had on those around Spiegelman in a series of smaller, shorter interviews. It also includes an archive of the audio interviews Spiegelman conducted with his father, historical documents he used to supplement the […]

Categories: 2014 Reads, Art, Comics, Genocide, Holocaust, Nonfiction • Tags: Art Spiegelman

Anne Frank and Me by Cherie Bennett and Jeff Gottesfeld

October 30, 2014 by Christina

Fiction — print. Puffin, 2001. 291 pgs. Purchased. The “me” in the title is American teenager Nicole Burns, who blogs about her frustrations with school, her inability to measure up to the ideal body or as the ideal student and daughter that her sister Elizabeth (known as Little Bit or LB on the blog) seems to be, and her infatuation with her classmate Jack (known as J on the blog) under the penname “Girl X”. “Frightening Thought du Jour: We […]

Categories: 2014 Reads, Europe, Fiction, France, Genocide, Holocaust, Juvenile • Tags: Cherie Bennett, Jeff Gottesfeld