The Iron Tracks
by Aharon Appelfeld
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Description
A Jew who survived the Holocaust obsessively rides the trains of postwar Europe in search of a Nazi concentration camp guard. The guard murdered his parents and he intends to kill him.Tags
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Member Reviews
It is a slow-moving read, yet an intense one. It moves along the tracks of time, taking the reader through Erwin Siegelbaum’s emotional conflicts. He and his parents were laborers in a Nazi camp, and that is where his parents were killed.
As we begin The Iron Tracks, time and place have moved forward four decades. As he travels closer to specific cities and towns on the train, he reflects on his life, remembering past years in those specific places. Time stands still, momentarily as he remembers the women he lusted with, the men he made small talk with, and those who he finds a sense of frienship with.
haron Appelfeld has a story to tell, and he tells it with magnificent prose and imagery. The emotional impact is not light and airy, but show more one that is depressing and disturbing. It is an intense study in one man’s thought process, emotions (or lack of), inner conflicts/world and passions. It is a study on displacement of the heart and mind. I recommend The Iron Tracks to everyone. show less
As we begin The Iron Tracks, time and place have moved forward four decades. As he travels closer to specific cities and towns on the train, he reflects on his life, remembering past years in those specific places. Time stands still, momentarily as he remembers the women he lusted with, the men he made small talk with, and those who he finds a sense of frienship with.
haron Appelfeld has a story to tell, and he tells it with magnificent prose and imagery. The emotional impact is not light and airy, but show more one that is depressing and disturbing. It is an intense study in one man’s thought process, emotions (or lack of), inner conflicts/world and passions. It is a study on displacement of the heart and mind. I recommend The Iron Tracks to everyone. show less
Probably my favorite of the 10 or so Appelfeld novels I've read.
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Published Reviews
ThingScore 100
"Der eiserne Pfad", in Israel bereits 1992 erschienen, ist durch seine schmucklose, doch zart poetische Sprache, durch die Klarheit der Form und durch die Souveränität, mit der der Autor sein Material bearbeitet, ein zeitloses literarisches Dokument.
added by Indy133
Lists
Jewish Books
367 works; 24 members
Tablet Magazine's List of 101 Great Jewish Books
103 works; 9 members
Author Information
76+ Works 3,658 Members
Aharon Appelfeld was born in a town near Czernowitz, Romania on February 16, 1932. When he was 8 years old, he and his father endured a forced march to a labor camp in Ukraine. He escaped the camp and spent the next three years as a shepherd working for various peasants and always concealing his Jewish identity. He then joined the Soviet Army as a show more cook's helper. After World War II, he spent months in a refugee camp in Italy before going to Palestine in 1946. He worked on a kibbutz, fought in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, and studied philosophy at Hebrew University. The Holocaust was the main subject of his books. His first novel, The Skin and the Gown, was published in 1971. His other works include Badenheim 1939, The Age of Wonders, To the Land of the Cattails, The Healer, The Immortal Bartfuss, For Every Sin, and Writing and the Holocaust. He received the Israel Prize for literature, The Prime Minister's Prize for Creative Writing, and two Anne Frank Literary Prizes. He taught Hebrew literature for many years at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, in Beersheba. He died on January 4, 2018 at the age of 85. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Awards and Honors
Awards
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- The Iron Tracks
- Original title
- מסילת ברזל
- Original publication date
- 1991
- Important places
- Austria
- Important events
- Holocaust; World War II
Classifications
- Genres
- Fiction and Literature, General Fiction, Historical Fiction
- DDC/MDS
- 892.436 — Literature & rhetoric Literatures of other languages Afro-Asiatic literatures Jewish, Israeli, and Hebrew Hebrew fiction 1947–2000
- LCC
- PJ5054 .A755 .M4713 — Language and Literature Oriental languages and literatures Oriental philology and literature Hebrew Literature Individual authors and works
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 178
- Popularity
- 183,041
- Reviews
- 2
- Rating
- (4.02)
- Languages
- 5 — English, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Spanish
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 10
- ASINs
- 2
