Writing the Book of Esther (French Expressions) - Hardcover

Raczymow, Henri

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0841913358 ISBN 13: 9780841913356

Verlag: Holmes & Meier Publishers Inc, 1995

Inhaltsangabe

The prominence of Holocaust themes in the media testifies to their compelling grip on contemporary consciousness and memory, particularly for a younger generation of Jews who never experienced the Nazi genocide first-hand but were raised amid its ashes.
Mathieu, the narrator of this novel, is one such person, drawn by his sister's suicide to confront the effects of his family's tragic past. Esther, the narrator's gifted older sister, a teacher and aspiring writer, was born in France to Polish-Jewish refugees in 1943, narrowly escaping the deportations that claimed the aunt after whom she is named. Growing up in the Jewish immigrant quarter of Paris, she is haunted by the Holocaust, obsessively reliving - in her fantasies, dreams, troubled behavior, and abortive struggle to write - the family trauma she has absorbed but not actually experienced. Born after the war, Mathieu is left to grapple with recovering his sister's memory - which he had resolutely tried to deny - and with it the meaning of his own identity, family origins, and historical predicament.
Piecing together other people's memories, conjecture, conversations, and eyewitness accounts, Mathieu attempts to write the book, and tell the tale, that Esther and his family failed to transmit. A result of his effort is the novel itself, which interweaves multiple layers of time, identity, memory, and experience.
Mathieu's intense relationship with his sister is provocative for its deep psychological and moral resonance. Being neither victim, survivor, nor witness, does he have the right to give voice to the unlived and unimaginable? Or is he a voyeur or imposter, usurping the lives of the real victims?
Placing in bold relief the hidden thoughts, obsessions, conflicts, and creative struggles of the second generation that has inherited the anger, sadness, guilt, and fear - but not the actual memory - of the Nazi genocide, Henri Raczymow gives an authentic and powerful voice to its grim legacy in our time.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Henri Raczymow was born in France in 1948 and lives in Paris. He is the prizewinning author of several novels as well as works of nonfiction. This is his first novel to be translated into English.

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Holmes & Meier Publishers Inc
• Erscheinungsdatum: 1995
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0841913358
• ISBN 13: 9780841913356
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Auflage: 1
• Anzahl der Seiten: 204
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar