Aharon Appelfeld
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All Whom I Have Loved
Aharon Appelfeld
- Knopf doubleday publishing group digital
- 10 Décembre 2008
- 9780307481320
The haunting story of a Jewish family in Eastern Europe in the 1930s that prefigures the fate of the Jews during World War II.
At the center is nine-year-old Paul Rosenfeld, the beloved only child of divorced parents, through whose eyes we view a dissolving, increasingly chaotic world. Initially, Paul lives with his mother-a secular, assimilated schoolteacher, who he adores until she "betrays" him by marrying the gentile André. He is then sent to live with his father-once an admired avant-garde artist, but now reviled by the critics as a "decadent Jew," who drowns his anger, pain, and humiliation in drink. Paul searches in vain for stability and meaning in a world that is collapsing around him, but his love for the earthy peasant girl who briefly takes care of him, the strange pull he feels towards the Jews praying in the synagogue near his home, and the fascination with which he observes Eastern Orthodox church rituals merely give him tantalizing glimpses into worlds of which he can never be a part.
The fates that Paul's parents will meet with Paul as terrified witness-his mother, deserted by her new husband and dying of typhus; his father, gunned down while trying to stop the robbery of a Jewish-owned shop-and his own fate as an orphaned Jewish child alone in Europe in 1938 are rendered with extraordinary subtlety and power, as they foreshadow, in the heart-wrenching story of three individuals, the cataclysm that is about to engulf all of European Jewry.
From the Hardcover edition.
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The youngest, least-favored member of an Eastern European Jewish family, Tzili is considered an embarrassment by her parents and older siblings. Her schooling has been a failure, she is simple and meek, and she seems more at home with the animals in the field than with people. And so when her panic-stricken family flees the encroaching Nazi armies, Tzili is left behind to fend for herself. At first seeking refuge with the local peasants, she is eventually forced to escape from them as well, and she takes to the forest, living a solitary existence until she is discovered by another Jewish refugee, a man who is as alone in the world as she is. As she matures into womanhood, they fall in love. And though their time together is tragically brief, their love for each other imbues Tzili with the strength to survive the war and begin a new life, together with other survivors, in Palestine. Aharon Appelfeld imbues Tzilis story with a harrowing beauty that is emblematic of the fate of an entire people.
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Katerina, simple paysanne chrétienne, retourne dans son village natal d'Ukraine soixante ans après son départ. Elle se remémore sa jeunesse, dans les années précédant la Seconde Guerre mondiale, du temps où elle servait chez des juifs. C'est là qu'elle s'ouvrit au monde, cruel et magnifique, et découvrit la chaleur d'un foyer. Appelfeld campe un personnage qui a assisté, impuissant, à l'horreur de la Shoah.
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The Story of a Life
Aharon Appelfeld
- Knopf doubleday publishing group digital
- 19 Août 2009
- 9780307491398
In spare, haunting, almost hallucinogenic prose, the internationally acclaimed, awardwinning novelist shares with usyes'>#8211;for the first timeyes'>#8211;the story of his own extraordinary survival and rebirth.Aharon Appelfeldyes'>#8217;s childhood ended when he was seven years old. The Nazis occupied Czernowitz in 1941, penned the Jews into a ghetto, and, a few months later, sent whoever had not been shot or starved to death on a forced march across the Ukraine to a labor camp. As men, women, and children fall away around them, Aharon and his father (his mother was killed in the early days of the occupation) miraculously survive, and Aharon, even more miraculously, escapes from the camp shortly after he arrives there.The next few years of Aharonyes'>#8217;s life are both harrowing and heartrending: he hides, alone, in the Ukrainian forests from peasants who are only too happy to turn Jewish children over to the Nazis; he has the presence of mind to pass himself off as an orphaned gentile when he emerges from the forest to seek work; and, at waryes'>#8217;s end, he joins the stream of refugees as they cross Europe on their way to displaced personsyes'>#8217; camps that have been set up for the survivors. He observes the full range of personalities in the campsyes'>#8211;exploitation exists side by side with compassionyes'>#8211;until he manages to get on a ship bound for Palestine. Once there, Aharon attempts to build a new life while struggling to retain he barely remembered fragments of his old life (everyone urges him simply to forget what he had experienced), and he takes his first, tentative steps as a writer. As he begins to receive national attention, Aharon realizes his lifeyes'>#8217;s calling: to bear witness to the unfathomable. In this unforgettable work of memory, Aharon Appelfeld offers personal glimpses into the experiences that resonate throughout his fiction.From the Hardcover edition.
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Blooms of Darkness
Aharon Appelfeld
- Knopf doubleday publishing group digital
- 9 Mars 2010
- 9780805242850
A new novel from the award-winning, internationally acclaimed Israeli writer (“One of the greatest writers of the age”--The Guardian), a haunting, heartbreaking story of love and loss. The ghetto in which the Jews have been confined is being liquidated by the Nazis, and eleven-year-old Hugo is brought by his mother to the local brothel, where one of the prostitutes has agreed to hide him. Mariana is a bitterly unhappy woman who hates what she has done to her life, and night after night Hugo sits in her closet and listens uncomprehendingly as she rages at the Nazi soldiers who come and go. When she’s not mired in self-loathing, Mariana is fiercely protective of the bewildered, painfully polite young boy. And Hugo becomes protective of Mariana, too, trying to make her laugh when she is depressed, soothing her physical and mental agony with cold compresses. As the memories of his family and friends grow dim, Hugo falls in love with Mariana. And as her life spirals downward, Mariana reaches out for consolation to the adoring boy who is on the cusp of manhood. The arrival of the Russian army sends the prostitutes fleeing. But Mariana is too well known, and she is arrested as a Nazi collaborator for having slept with the Germans. As the novel moves toward its heartrending conclusion, Aharon Appelfeld once again crafts out of the depths of unfathomable tragedy a renewal of life and a deeper understanding of what it means to be human.
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Until the Dawn's Light
Aharon Appelfeld
- Knopf doubleday publishing group digital
- 11 Octobre 2011
- 9780805243000
From the award-winning, internationally acclaimed writer (yes'>ldquo;One of the best novelists aliveyes'>rdquo; yes'>mdash;Irving Howe): a Jewish woman marries a gentile laborer in turn-of-the-century Austria, with disastrous results.yes'>#160;A high school honor student bound for university and a career as a mathematician, Blanca lives with her parents in a small town in Austria in the early years of the twentieth century. At school one day she meets Adolf, who comes from a family of peasant laborers. Tall and sturdy, plainspoken and uncomplicated, Adolf is unlike anyone Blanca has ever met. And Adolf is awestruck by beautiful, brilliant Blanca–even though she is Jewish. When Blanca is asked by school administrators to tutor Adolf, the inevitable happens: they fall in love. And when Adolf asks her to marry him, Blanca abandons her plans to attend university, converts to Christianity, and leaves her family, her friends, and her old life behind.yes'>#160;Almost immediately, things begin to go horribly wrong. Told in a series of flashbacks as Blanca and her son flee from their town with the police in hot pursuit, the tragic story of Blanca’s life with Adolf recalls a time and place that are no more but that powerfully reverberate in collective memory.From the Hardcover edition.
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