Point of No Return

by Martha Gellhorn

Book Overview

Originally published in 1948, this powerful novel follows a U.S. Army infantry battalion in Europe through the last months of the Second World War--through the Battle of the Bulge, the Allied sweep across Germany, and the discovery of the Nazi death camps. Jacob Levy, a young soldier from St. Louis, has never given much thought to politics, world affairs, or his own Jewish heritage, but after the liberation of Dachau, he confronts the horror of the...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0803270518
• ISBN13: 9780803270510
• Release Date: May 1995
• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Length: 333 Pages
• Weight: 0.84 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.3" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

A wonderful WWII novel by an unsung writer.

For far too long, Martha Gellhorn's single claim to fame has been as "one of Hemingway's wives." Thanks to a recent article in The New Yorker, I have had the joy of "rediscovering"a wonderful author and journalist in her own right.Point of No Return is a riveting, often graphic, war novel centered around a young Jewish American protagonist,Jacob Levy and his experiences during the closing months of WWII. The novel follows Jacob's battalion through France, Luxembourg, and finally Germany. During the liberation of Luxembourg, Jacob meets a young local woman and they try, as best they can, to have a relationship despite the language barrier and the constant problems caused by the war itself.The climax of the book occurs when Jacob discovers,via a god awful tour of the recently liberated Dachau, the realities of the Holocaust firsthand. He is so overcome with horror and fury that he takes his own personal revenge, despite the fact the war has ended. The remainder of the book deals with the aftermath of his actions and how he comes to terms with them.Perhaps most moving of all is Gellhorn's "Afterword" which discusses why she wrote the novel and the full significance of its title.