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Loading... Fatelessby Imre Kertész
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book.  inaudible | Oct 4, 2009 |  Georg Koves is a 14-year-old Hungarian boy whose father is sent to work at a "labor camp". Georg himself is told he must work instead of attend school. Taken off of a bus en route to work, Georg and other Jews are transported to Auschwitz. He is later moved to two other concentration camps - first Buchenwald, then Zeitz. Reporting on his daily life in a way that doesn't reveal emotion, he tells of what he sees and learns as he is passed along from one concentration camp to another. The writing is detailed and beautiful. However, it is hard to imagine that this is the voice of a 14-year-old boy. Perhaps it's the translation, although this is a newer translation of the book called Sorstalansag in Hungarian. Because the story lacks emotional footing, much attention is paid to the minutae of Georg's daily life. It's probably a "safe" way of reading about the Holocaust, but it is strange indeed. One thing that it does well is capture the wonder of one person who tries to make sense of what he sees around him. The story-telling narrative runs along with no pause - almost like the day-after-day sense of Georg's being caught up in a life over which he has no control. This is for sure a mesmerizing read. (  ) SqueakyChu | Dec 26, 2008 | Much to think about. (  ) mareki | Dec 22, 2008 | Epictetus goes to camp but the aftermath is iffy. 1  simonaries | Sep 11, 2008 | bostonbibliophile | Jul 9, 2008 |  no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com Book Description (ISBN 0099502526, Paperback)One of Publishers Weekly's Fifty Best Books of 1992Fateless 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." (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:57:55 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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Wikipedia in English (2)
I read this book alongside Primo Levi's 'Auschwitz Report' and Elias Canetti's essay 'Power and Survival'. (