
Nine Suitcases
Bela Zsolt(Author)
Pimlico (Publisher)
Published on 7. April 2005
Book
Paperback/Softback
336 pages
978-0-7126-0689-9 (ISBN)
Description
Originally published in weekly instalments, Nine Suitcases is the Hungarian writer Bela Zsolt's harrowing memoir of his experiences in the ghetto of Nagyvarad and as a forced labourer in the Ukraine. Written with exceptional freshness and a devastating blend of angry despair and cool detachment, Zsolt - one of the earliest writers on the Holocaust - provides not only a rare insight into Hungarian fascism, but a shocking exposure of the cruelty, indifference, selfishness, cowardice and betrayal of which human beings - the victims no less than the perpetrators - are capable in extreme circumstances. Interspersed with moments of grotesque farce, grim irony and occasional memories of human kindness, Zsolt's nightmarish but meticulously realistic chronicle of smaller and larger crimes against humanity is as riveting as it is horrifying.
Reviews / Votes
[A] heartbreaking memoir... Unbearably immediate -- Laurence Phelan * Independent on Sunday * A sombre yet strangely beautiful account, devoid of sentimentality...the recent publication of his work in English is long overdue -- Phil Baker * Sunday Times * Remarkable...exceptional -- Caroline Moorehead * Times Literary Supplement * This is by far the best book I've come across on the subject of the extermination of Hungary's Jews -- Tibor Fischer * Guardian * Very, very rarely you read something that knocks the breath out of you... This masterpiece does -- Carole Angier * Literary Review *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Vintage
Product notice
Paperback (UK-B)
Dimensions
Height: 199 mm
Width: 129 mm
Thickness: 24 mm
Weight
270 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-7126-0689-9 (9780712606899)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Bela Zsolt was one of Hungary's best-known writers in the early twentieth century. Born in 1895, he served in the Austro-Hungarian Army from 1914 to 1918 and in a Hungarian-Jewish forced-labour unit in 1942-1943. In 1944, after a spell in a Hungarian ghetto and a German concentration camp, he found refuge in Switzerland. In 1945 he returned to Hungary and in 1947 became an anti-communist member of parliament. He died in 1949.
Ladislaus Loeb was born in Transylvania. He is Emeritus Professor of German at the University of Sussex.
Ladislaus Loeb was born in Transylvania. He is Emeritus Professor of German at the University of Sussex.