Kaddish for an Unborn Child

by Imre Kertész

Book Overview

The first word in this mesmerizing novel by the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature is "No." It is how the novel's narrator, a middle-aged Hungarian-Jewish writer, answers an acquaintance who... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1400078628
• ISBN13: 9781400078622
• Release Date: November 2004
• Publisher: Vintage
• Length: 128 Pages
• Weight: 0.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 5.2" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Guranteed to make you question your beliefs

Let me start off by saying that this book is quite difficult to read and to follow. First, there isn't that much material on the internet to help you follow this book (e.g. cliff's notes, reports, etc.). Second of all, the vocabulary can be very daunting to comprehend and definitly requires a dictionary by your side if you want to follow the story in its entirety. I am certainly not the most educated fellow in the country, but I do at least have a bachelor's degree from a major state university, and I still found this book to be quite difficult to read. Now, let me address WHY on earth you may be interested in reading this book. For me, there were two major aspects. First, I am very interested in the WWII period and the Holocaust specifically. I try to read any book about WWII, or the Holocaust, as well as watch any movie that may come out on the subject. This book not only provides some background information on the author's life during the Holocaust but also what those experiences did to his future. Secondly, "Kaddish..." has won many awards and can be found on many lists of "must-read" books that may change your life/beliefs. "No!" That is how the narrator/primary character in the book begins his story. What follows this first word is a barrage of information, personal stories, theories, philosophies, etc. The narrator brings the reader along in a very tumultous journey into his past, present and future in a non-sequential order. We learn about the narrator's experiences as a child and how his experiences at a boarding school after his parents' divorce greatly affected his views of the world and humanity as a whole. Later, we learn what happened to the narrator while he was imprisoned in the Nazi extermination camps. The narrator centers much of his views and arguments on one experience that he had while in a concentration camp with a fellow whom he just calls "Teacher." This fellow was able to perform an act of kindness under the most awful and degrading conditions and our narrator is both baffled and even distrusting of this act of kindness. This act sets his mind into motion as he tries to understand how a human being can both be exterminating people in concentration camps and at the same time another human being has the capacity to think of someone other than himself under the most trying circumstances. Later, the narrator lets us know why and how his marriage failed. He reveals what his ex-wife told him before she left him, which to me was the climax of the story. In the end, we see the narrator pondering his existence as it relates to the child that he refused to bring into the world, because he couldn't bear the thought of bringing an innocent child into such a monstrous, brutish world. I don't want to give any more of the story away, but I do want to encourage everyone to read this book. The ideas and philosophies brought out in the book are enough to propel even the biggest optimist into uncertainty about the

Difficult to read, but a growth experience

As a childless, second-generation descendant of Polish Jews who barely made it out of Europe in time to escape the gas chambers, I had heard that certain "psychological symptoms" of Holocaust survivors often appeared in later generations. I didn't know what this meant until I read Kaddish for an Unborn Child. Kertesz puts in writing emotions and beliefs that I had never been able to articulate or make sense of, but which I recognized as a big part of who I am. This book is not easy to read, but it's worth the effort and the tears.

Attention: Only read the new translation by Tim Wilkinson

Anyone who reads the poor first translation of Fateless and the shamefully bad translation of Kaddish cannot even get close to the true spirit of the original works. Thanks to Tim Wilkinson English speakers can finally enjoy these excellent books. Look for the titles "Fatelessness" and "Kaddish for an Unborn Child", both translated by Wilkinson. These new editions are at last worthy of the originals and the Nobel Prize. (See also October 16, 2002 review by Marton Sass) A movie based on the novel Fateless is also out with English subtitles; don't miss it, if you have a chance. Beautiful work.

Isolation

People are vaguely aware that Adorno said that art after Auschwitz is impossible. But writing in his essay "Commitment," Adorno criticized the way that the victims could be turned into works of art, that we could find pleasure from their suffering and death. Moreover there is something false in pointing out that humanity can bloom in "so-called extreme situations." In searching for the "authenticitity" of the victim, the line between victim and executioner is muddled. And while one may point out with Primo Levi that the camp survivors existed in a grey zone, Adorno points out that such blurring is "something generally, of course, more bearable for the executioners." That is the challenge that Holocaust literature has to face. How does this short, but dense novella of the Hungarian Imre Kertesz deal with the problem? One way such literature can is to emphasize the humanity of the victims by showing the whole sickening ambiguity of their complexity. In Aharon Appelfeld this is shown by delineating the moral compromisings of their characters, a complexity linked to, but also independent of, their death camp experience. For Kertesz it is shown in his narrator's solipsism. The narrator survived the Holocaust as a child. Before beginning his monologue he married another Jew, who was born after the war, but later divorced her. This book was originally published in 1990, the year of Hungary's first fully free elections. It is actually quite representative of the atmosphere of eighties Hungary in that the slowly dissolving Communist regime does not make much of an appearance. Instead there is a certain atmosphere of aimless apolitical consumerist hedonism (at one point the narrator dithers over whether to get a house or not). Nor is there much discussion of the history of Hungarian anti-semitism. Indeed the perpetrators do not make much of an appearance, which is one way of meeting Adorno's objections. The title is intriguing. The Kaddish is the prayer to remember the dead, but the child in the title not only never existed, he or she was never really imagined. But it is not other people that the narrator is so concerned about, but the memory. It is a signpost of the narrator's solipsism.The novella consists of long sentences that make up long paragraphs over many pages. In their style, in their pessimistic content and of the failure of the characters to connect with other people, they are reminiscent of the late Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard, whom the narrator mentions in passing. The narrator circles around and around the sources of his isolation--his unsuccessful attempts to find "meaning" about the Holocaust, his inability to come to terms with his father, his apartness from his wife, his inability to express his thoughts. The vital point of his marriage, he "realizes" is that he cannot live in a marriage. He writes that he and his wife came together on his plans to try to understand the Holocaust, but he "realizes" that he

Excellent, just don't read the English version yet

Due to my close personal ties to the author, I am unable to provide an objective review of this book. However, readers should be warned that the English translation of Kertesz's book does not live up to the standards worthy of a Nobel Prize (as evidenced by the review listed below!) The poor translation is one of the reasons why Kertesz has remained obscure in the world of English literature. Anyone truly interested should refer to the original language (Hungarian), or to the German version (Kertesz is fluent in German and was able to proofread the translation). The Swedish version was translated by a close friend and is also true to the original text (if I am correct, this is the version reviewed by the Nobel committee). For those locked into English, do not despair: a new translation will be released hopefully within the next year.