Kertesz, Imre , 1929-

Fatelessness : a novel / by Imre Kertész ; translated from the Hungarian by Tim Wilkinson - 1st Vintage International ed - New York : Vintage International , 2004. - 262 p. ; 21 cm.

Previously published: Fateless. Evanston, Ill. : Northwestern University Press, 1992. Translation of: Sorstalanság.

At the age of 14 Georg Koves is plucked from his home in a Jewish section of Budapest and without any particular malice, placed on a train to Auschwitz. He does not understand the reason for his fate. He doesn't particularly think of himself as Jewish. And his fellow prisoners, who decry his lack of Yiddish, keep telling him, "You are no Jew." In the lowest circle of the Holocaust, Georg remains an outsider. The genius of Imre Kertesz's unblinking novel lies in its refusal to mitigate the strangeness of its events, not least of which is Georg's dogmatic insistence on making sense of what he witnesses-or pretending that what he witnesses makes sense. Haunting, evocative, and all the more horrifying for its rigorous avoidance of sentiment, Fatelessness is a masterpiece in the traditions of Primo Levi, Elie Wiesel, and Tadeusz Borowski.

9781400078639

2004057217


Holocaust, Jewish, 1939-1945----Fiction


Budapest (Hungary)----Fiction

PH3281.K3815 / S6713 2004

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