Kirjahaku

'A masterpiece ... the greatest novel of the Holocaust' The Guardian A haunting, dreamlike portrayal of the encroaching horror of the Holocaust onto a genteel MittelEuropean resort town Badenheim, a resort town near the forests of Vienna, is preparing for the arts festival of the summer season. The hotel workers and local tradespeople rush to prepare the small town for the influx of vacationers. But just as the season is getting into full swing, a small note appears on a municipal notice board: the Sanitation Department is announcing an increase in its jurisdiction. No one knows what the Sanitation Department is, but no matter – the festival carries on.Soon inspectors are spread all over town, bringing estrangement, suspicion and mistrust wherever they go. Meanwhile, the guests carry on pursuing their pleasures and the townspeople attend to their troubles. Then another announcement appears: all Jews must register with the Sanitation Department.An allegory, satire and fable all in one, Badenheim 1939 is a story of denial and normalisation, masterfully creating an atmosphere of impending dread and horror. Gripping and unforgettable, this is one of most intriguing and eerie books ever written about the Holocaust.

‘Read this book . . . what a gift of lyric language and style, of emotion purified by pain this is’ Los Angeles TimesFleeing an abusive home, Katerina, a teenager in 1880s Ukraine, is taken in by a Jewish family, finding safety in their warmth and rituals. When a pogrom is wrought upon the family, she is alone again. Decades later, having suffered and retaliated for that suffering, an elderly Katerina is released from prison at the end of World War Two, and is devastated to find a world emptied of its Jews. Ever the outsider, she realizes that she has survived only to bear witness to the fact they ever existed at all. Described by Aharon Appelfeld as being ‘about what is inseparable from me’, this extraordinary novel tells, with moving simplicity, the story of a people; of life’s horror and beauty.‘Appelfeld reimagines the place of his own origins through a perspective that in its generosity of feeling recalls Tolstoy and Chekhov’ The New York Times Book ReviewTranslated by Jeffrey M. Green

An astonishing memoir of the Holocaust through the eyes of a child, and an exquisite meditation on memory and trauma Aharon Appelfeld was the beloved only child of middle-class Jewish parents living in what is now Ukraine at the outbreak of World War Two. Their peaceful life is upended when soldiers invade their town. His mother is shot dead in her own garden. The then-seven-year-old Aharon does not witness her murder, but he does hear her scream.Aharon and his father are sent to a concentration camp and separated. Memory and trauma combine to create a patchwork of reminiscences. Aharon is ten years old when he escapes from the camp into the forests of Ukraine, and is overwhelmed by the sight of an apple tree laden with fruit.Living off the land for two years before making the long journey south to Italy and eventually Israel and freedom, Appelfeld finally found a home in which he could make a life for himself, eventually becoming one of Israel’s most acclaimed writers. This is the extraordinary and painful memoir of his childhood and youth and a compelling account of a boy coming of age in a hostile world.

Set in contemporary Israel, The Immortal Bartfuss is perhaps the most profound and powerful portrait of a Holocaust survivor ever drawn. Using the techniques of omission and indirection perfected in such masterpieces as Badenheim 1939 and To the Land of the Cattails, Appelfeld tells the story of Bartfuss, enigmatically "the immortal" because of his experience in the camps. Now locked in a hopeless marriage, Bartfuss struggles to suppress the emotions and recollections he fears and despises, while trying to keep alive the poise, dignity, and compassion essential to a human being. The Immortal Bartfuss is an overwhelming and unforgettable study of a man reduced to his tragic limits.

In For Every Sin, Aharon Appelfeld, recounts the moving and unforgettable story of Theo, a young Holocaust survivor struggling to come to terms with his experience. A student when he was first imprisoned, Theo is a young man who has lost his family and friends and wants nothing more than to return to his home. In a desperate attempt to escape the pain of the camps, he sets out to walk across Europe, determined to remain alone until he has regained his strength. In the nightmarish world he enters, haunted by images from his past and continually reunited with fellow survivors, he is forced to come face to face with his own demons and the human condition from which he cannot escape.

Our story opens in an Austrian city, two generations before the Holocaust, where almost all the Jews have converted to Christianity. The church bells are pealing today for Karl, an ambitious young civil servant whose conversion will clear his path to a coveted high government post. For Karl and his friends, most of whom have already converted, Judaism is an obstacle to their advancement that is easily discarded. The only Jews left are their impoverished relatives in the outlying Carpathian mountains and a few merchants whose shoddy stalls in the center of the town have triggered a campaign to remove them in the name of progress and civic beauty. Karl's future looks bright, but with his promotion comes a political crisis that turns his conversion into a baptism by fire, unexpectedly reuniting Karl with his past and kindling a love affair that will force him to take a stand he could never have imagined.

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 with 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. But when she's not mired in self-loathing, Mariana is fiercely protective of the bewildered, painfully polite young boy. And Hugo, in turn, becomes protective of Mariana, trying to make her laugh when she is depressed, and soothing her physical and mental agony with cold compresses. As 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. The arrival of the Russian army sends the prostitutes fleeing, but Mariana is tracked down and 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.

"Aharon Appelfeld is one of the subtlest, most unorthodox, and most exactingly perceptive novelists to make the memory of the Holocaust his abiding project." --Philip Gourevitch, The New Yorker A lonely older man and his devoted young caretaker transform each other's lives in ways they could never have imagined. Ernst is a gruff seventy-year-old Red Army veteran from Ukraine who landed, almost by accident, in Israel after World War II. A retired investment adviser, he lives alone (his first wife and baby daughter were killed by the Nazis; he divorced his shrewish second wife) and spends his time laboring over his unpublished novels. Irena, in her mid-thirties, is the unmarried daughter of Holocaust survivors who has been taking care of Ernst since his surgery two years earlier; she arrives every morning promptly at eight and usually leaves every afternoon at three. Quiet and shy, Irena is in awe of Ernst's intellect. And as the months pass, Ernst comes to depend on the gentle young woman who runs his house, listens to him read from his work, and occasionally offers a spirited commentary on it. But Ernst's writing gives him no satisfaction, and he is haunted by his godless, Communist past. His health, already poor, begins to deteriorate even further; he becomes mired in depression and seems to lose the will to live. But this is something Irena will not allow. As she becomes an increasingly important part of his life--moving into his home, encouraging him in his work, easing his pain--Ernst not only regains his sense of self and discovers the path through which his writing can flow but he also discovers, to his amazement, that Irena is in love with him. And, even more astonishing, he realizes that he is in love with her, too.

A Tel Aviv shopkeeper visits his parents' Polish birthplace in an attempt to come to terms with their complex legacy--and is completely unprepared for what he finds there. Yaakov Fine's practical wife and daughters are baffled by his decision to leave his flourishing dress shop for a ten-day trip to his family's ancestral village in Poland. Struggling to emerge from a midlife depression, Yaakov is drawn to Szydowce, intrigued by the stories he'd heard as a child from his parents and their friends, who would wax nostalgic about their pastoral, verdant hometown in the decades before 1939. The horrific years that followed were relegated to the nightmares that shattered sleep and were not discussed during waking hours. When he arrives in Krakow, Yaakov enjoys the charming sidewalk cafes and relaxed European atmosphere, so different from the hurly burly of Tel Aviv. And his landlady in Szydowce--beautiful, sensual Magda, with a tragic past of her own--enchants him with her recollections of his family. But when Yaakov attempts to purchase from the townspeople the desecrated tombstones that had been stolen from Szydowce's plowed-under Jewish cemetery, a very different Poland emerges, one that shatters Yaakov's idyllic view of the town and its people, and casts into sharp relief the tragic reality of Jewish life in Poland--past, present, and future. In this novel of revelation and reconciliation, Aharon Appelfeld once again mines lived experience to create fiction of powerful, universal resonance.

HONOR 2016 - Mildred L. Batchelder Honor BookWINNER 2016 - Sydney Taylor Book Award, Association of Jewish LibrariesFINALIST 2016 - National Jewish Book Awards Adam and Thomas is the story of two nine-year-old Jewish boys who survive World War II by banding together in the forest. They are alone, visited only furtively every few days by Mina, a mercurial girl who herself has found refuge from the war by living with a peasant family. She makes secret journeys and brings the boys parcels of food at her own risk. Adam and Thomas must learn to survive and do. They forage and build a small tree house, although it's more like a bird's nest. Adam's family dog, Miro, manages to find his way to him, to the joy of both boys. Miro brings the warmth of home with him. Echoes of the war are felt in the forest. The boys meet fugitives fleeing for their lives and try to help them. They learn to disappear in moments of danger. And they barely survive winter's harshest weather, but when things seem to be at their worst, a miracle happens.

The second and last children's book by the extraordinary Holocaust survivor and Hebrew-language author of the award-winning Adam & Thomas. A mystical and transcendent journey of two wanderers, an eleven-year-old boy and an old man to whom the boy has been entrusted by his father, a Jew, fleeing the ravages of the war by the late award winning author, Aharon Appelfeld. The old man is a former Ukranian commander, revered by the soldiers under his command, who has gone blind and chosen the life of a wanderer as his last spiritual adventure. The child, now disguised as a Ukranian non-Jew, learns from the old man how to fend for himself and how to care for others. In the tradition of The Alchemist, the travelers learn from each other and the boy grows stronger and wiser as the old man teaches him the art of survival and, through the stories he shares, the reasons for living. Long Summer Nights carries its magic not only in the words, but also in the silences between them.

"Manchmal genügt der Geruch von gammeligem Stroh oder ein Vogelschrei, um mich weit weg und tief in mich hinein zu schleudern." Der dies sagt, der Schriftsteller Aharon Appelfeld, war bei Ausbruch des Zweiten Weltkrieges sieben Jahre alt, ein behütetes Kind assimilierter Juden in Czernowitz, ein kleiner Junge namens Erwin. Seine Kindheit endet über Nacht: Deutsche und Rumänen ermorden seine Mutter, er hört ihren Schrei. Als er nach Monaten im Ghetto und dem Todesmarsch durch die Steppen der Ukraine im Lager eintrifft, wird er von seinem Vater getrennt. Erwin gelingt die Flucht in die Wälder. Ein Baum mit roten Äpfeln prägt sich dem Hungernden unauslöschlich ein. Allein im Wald, umgeben von Tieren, versteckt er sich. Dann setzt Regen ein, es wird kalt. Er klopft bei Bauern, gibt sich als christliches Waisenkind aus. Bald hat er die Gesichter seiner Eltern, sein Zuhause fast ganz vergessen. Sechs lange Jahre dauert der Krieg. Nach Aufenthalten in Durchgangslagern, wo Gaukler, Schmuggler und Diebe gestrandete Kinder für sich arbeiten lassen, bringt ihn ein Schiff nach Palästina. Er kommt allein und ohne Sprache, ein Vierzehnjähriger, der alles verloren hat und von vorn beginnen muss. Von seinem Leben, wie es sich Aharon Appelfeld heute zeigt, erzählt dieses berührende literarische Zeugnis, ein kluges, poetisches Buch über den Kampf zwischen Erinnerung und Vergessen, Reden und Schweigen - eines der großen Werke jüdischer Literatur.

Först efter sju dagar når beskedet om att kriget tagit slut fram till en liten grupp människor som hållit sig gömda i en bunker. Avskalat och skickligt gestaltar Appelfeld deras möte med sin nya verklighet. Dagsljuset, för skarpt för deras ögon. Människorna i husen runtomkring, fiender till alldeles nyss. Tillgång till mat, utan att kunna känna hunger. Allt genomsyrat av en krypande känsla av otrygghet och villrådighet, och den direkta, intensiva smärta som drabbar vid insikten om att alla ens nära har gått under. När vi öppnade vårt gömställe och dagsljuset plötsligt steg ner i bunkern, visste vi inte vad vi skulle göra. Våra ansikten fylldes av barnslig förundran, som ansiktsuttrycket hos en stammare. Zeitel sa: Rusa inte ut i kylan. Berel och Hershel kröp ihop och ville inte röra sig. Utomhus väntade en glasklar vinter. Ur fjärran glittrade ett ljussken som var för starkt för oskyddade ögon. Himlaranden var stabilt, ogenomträngligt blå. På kvällen gick vi tillbaka till bunkern och stängde om oss. Vad såg ni? frågade Zeitel mitt i natten, men vi var trötta och svarade: Inget. Sedan somnade vi om.Aharon Appelfeld (1932 2018) föddes i staden Tjernovtsy i dåvarande Rumänien, nuvarande Ukraina. Nazisternas invasion ledde till att den unge Appelfeld deporterades till koncentrations- och arbetslägren i Transnistrien tillsammans med sin far. Men Aharon lyckades snart fly. Han höll sig gömd på den ukrainska landsbygden i tre år, tills han som tolvårig pojke anslöt sig till ryska armén och blev kökspojke. Efter krigsslutet kom han till Israel, där han så småningom återsåg sin far som också lyckats överleva. Appelfelds nya språk blev hebreiska, det språk han som författare också kom skriva på. Appelfelds författarskap spänner över tjugotalet verk och han har belönats med en lång rad prestigefulla utmärkelser. Två av hans romaner, Undrens tid och Kaveldunets land, finns översatta sedan tidigare (utgivna i Sverige 1986 respektive 1989), men detta är första gången någon av hans noveller ges ut på svenska. Novellix ger ut små böcker med en novell per bok, samtliga med originalomslag av svenska formgivare, illustratörer och konstnärer. Novellix-novellerna säljs både styckvis och förpackade i presentaskar. Stora läsupplevelser i ett litet format.

When Aharon Appelfeld was seven years old the Nazis occupied Czernowitz, his hometown. They penned the Jews into a ghetto and eventually 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 miraculously survive, and Aharon, even more miraculously, escapes from the camp shortly after he arrives there. The next few years of Aharon'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 war's end, he joins the stream of refugees as they cross Europe on their way to displaced persons' camps that have been set up for the survivors. Aharon eventually makes his way to Palestine; once there, he attempts to build a new life while struggling to retain the barely remembered fragments of his old life, and he takes his first, tentative steps as a writer. As he begins to receive national attention, Aharon realizes his life'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.