This is the autobiographical story of a holocaust survivor, Hungarian writer and Nobel Prize-winner, Imre Kertesz. To me, it is reminiscent of Primo Levi and even Victor Frankl. A boy of fourteen is snatched from Budapest by the Nazis and … Continue reading
The title suggests a historical novel, for the Middle Passage was the sea route used by slavers going from West Africa to the Caribbean. The book does invoke important aspects of the slave trade, life at sea in the 1830’s, … Continue reading
This is a fine postwar novel in the tradition of others that expressed dehumanization and even nihilism after the catastrophic death and destruction of World War II. Unlike many others (such as The Sheltering Sky, The Stranger), in this one … Continue reading
The second-person narrator, Balram Halwai, is a boy who wipes tables in a bakery in a poor village in India – a bakery his grandfather once owned but which was seized by a rich person. His father now pedals a … Continue reading