JIM SHEPARD is the author of six previous novels and four story collections, including Like You'd Understand, Anyway, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and won The Story Prize. His short fiction has appeared in, among other magazines, The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, McSweeney's, The Paris Review, The Atlantic, Esquire, Tin House, Granta, Zoetrope, Electric Literature, and Vice, and has often been selected for The Best American Short Stories and The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories. He lives in Williamstown, Massachusetts, with his wife and three children, and teaches at Williams College.
Winner of the 2016 PEN New England Award
An ALA Notable Book of 2015
Winner of the Sophie Brody Medal for Excellence in Jewish
Literature
Finalist for the Jewish Book Award
"Shepard's harrowing, comic, and deeply human story of a boy in the
Warsaw ghetto crushed me. This book needs to be read." --Anthony
Doerr (Favorite Reads of 2015)
"A masterpiece. . . a remarkable novel destined to join the shelf
of essential Holocaust literature. . . . a story of such startling
candor about the complexity of heroism that it challenges each of
us to greater courage. . . . Shepard has created something
transcendent and timeless." --Ron Charles, The Washington Post
"Shepard is a flat-out brilliant and deeply empathetic writer [who]
puts the reader inside a known enclosure and yet makes us feel anew
the bewilderment and horror of that time and place. . . . The Book
of Aron is a worthy, necessary addition to the literature of the
Holocaust." --Rob Spillman, Guernica
"In the pantheon of living American writers, [Shepard] has provided
a perfectly paced plot [and] by limiting his perspective to a young
Polish boy [has] given the story an urgency and immediacy that made
this reviewer read the entire book in only two sittings. . . . The
Book of Aron is a tragedy of heroism, exquisitely written and
devastating as it progresses. A valuable addition to Holocaust
literature, Aron's story will likely linger long in any reader's
memory." --Greg Walkin, The Lincoln Journal Star
"This tender, slim novel is so distressing, so moving, so
absorbing, so horrible and even so funny (in places and in the
saddest ways) that I had to reading it during the daytime because
when I read pages before bed, they'd keep me up half the night.
Maybe it's because my own sons are approaching Aron's age, but I'm
not sure I've ever felt the anguish of the ghetto during the Second
World War so acutely. (And the relationship between Aron and his
mother is exquisitely built and exquisitely painful.)" --Anthony
Doerr, The San Francisco Chronicle
"[Shepard's] narrow perspective creates an uncanny tension and lets
us feel the horror in a way that feels fresh and freshly
devastating. . . . The Book of Aron doesn't let you put it down,
doesn't let you stop reading until you get to the end [and] you've
lived a lifetime with Aron--for better and for worse, you've done
what he's done and thought what he's thinking." --Tony Perez, Tin
House
"It is the relationship between Aron and Korczak that sits at the
heart of the novel [and] it is in the orbit of this entirely good
man that Aron's scarred heart begins to heal and expand. . . .
Shepard is well known for his media res endings; there is some
small mercy in the fact that he employs such an ending here."
--Geraldine Brooks, The New York Times Book Review
"Surrounded by filth, fear, disease, and danger, Aron--an
unpromising child--finds his vocation and his voice. In
straightforward and unsparing words, he tells his story, drawing
the reader into the war as an inexplicable event that sweeps Aron
and his gang of fellow smugglers into a daring mix of childhood
bravado, ingenuity, and courage. . . . Shepard tells a
heartbreaking and horrific story; he was also inspired by Aron's
story, and the story of all children stripped of their lives by
uncontrollable forces they cannot understand." --Maron L. Waxman,
The Jewish Book Council
"A testament to Shepard's storytelling powers [with] vitality,
compassion and sardonic humour. . . . The Book of Aron carries the
burden of its subject with a mordant frankness at once
heartbreaking, refreshing and--hardest won of all--enchanting. Jim
Shepard's novel enters a crowded canon and it stands there, head
and shoulders, with the best." --Toby Lichtig, The Jewish
Quarterly
"A work of art [and] moving masterpiece. . . . Shepard turns hell
into a testament of love and sacrifice. . . . What better way to
rebuke the Nazi piety that all Jewish life was utterly worthless
than by bringing to full and empathetic life a perfect nobody of a
kid, historically irrelevant as anything but a number, one of a
countless horde?" --Joshua
Ferris, The Guardian [U.K.]
"One of America's very finest writers [has] not only created
something shocking, haunting and truly special, but captures the
essence of humanity and its opposite, compassion as well as
cruelty. An unforgettable book." --Billy O'Callaghan, The Irish
Examiner
"Extraordinary. . . utterly shattering. The Book of Aron is a
masterpiece [about] the possibilities of love and heroism--and
their limits." --Antonia Senior, The Times [U.K.]
"A transcendent fictional experience [that] reminds us of the
infinite varieties of good and evil, and of the many paradoxical
places in between. . . . The book's enormous power comes from its
stylistic restraint [and its] dignity flows from its utter lack of
pretension." - Dan Cryer, The San Francisco Chronicle
"Remarkable. . . Shepard has distilled his meticulous research into
a swift, savage narrative. . . So rigorous and adroit in its
handling of its horrific subject matter, it makes you want to
investigate everything else Shepard has written." --Michael
Upchurch, The Seattle Times
"A breathtaking, heartbreaking account not only of one child's
experience of terror and brutality, but a stark reminder of our own
limitations and complicity. It will rightly join the masterworks of
Holocaust literature, but as with the best of those books the
larger truth, the fundamental humanity, emerges from the narrow
specificity of the individual to embrace the universal." - Robert
J. Wiersema, The National Post
"Shepard's novel joins a heartbreaking group including The Diary of
Anne Frank, Number the Stars and other child's-eye perspectives on
the Holocaust." --Time
"An immensely rewarding, shocking and beautiful book. . . .
Shepard, who for years has been one of this country's greatest
fiction writers, is as original here as he has ever been. . . .
Aron himself becomes an unforgettable character almost instantly."
--Michael Schaub, NPR
"Brilliant work. . . simultaneously the easiest book to read this
summer and the most heartbreaking [with] characters you'll never
forget. . . . We are propelled into the real grit, sweat, labor,
and spark of humans caught in history's circumstance." --Steve
Yates, The Jackson Clarion-Ledger
"Written in spare prose, with compassion, touches of dark humor,
and a profound understanding of human complexity, The Book of Aron
provides a powerful and poignant reminder of the start moral
choices the Jews of Warsaw were forced to make."--Glenn C.
Altschuler, The Jerusalem Post
"Haunting. . . . [with] a matter-of-fact voice that can describe
horrific evening with chilling precision." --The New Yorker
"We're in the hands of a master storyteller. . . . The Book of Aron
suggests that literature still can be a serious business. Molding
events from the Holocaust into a story form--well, that's the art."
--Aaron Howard, The Jewish Herald-Voice
"Remarkable, heartrending and hopeful." --Debra M. Rosser-Hogben,
LancasterOnline
"If Aron owns the rights to the book's seductive narrative voice,
it is Korczak who embodies its enveloping humanity. With affecting
teamwork, a feckless boy with little conscience and an aging man
with a surfeit of humility walk into the fire, lifting The Book of
Aron into a realm with the finest Holocaust fiction." --Jan Stuart,
The Boston Globe
"Shepard succeeds because he never wavers from his novel's moral
focus. This is a book about annihilation, and the human spirit that
somehow lives on, in slivers and cracks. This is the truth that
Shepard siphons away from a history otherwise filled with the chill
of encroaching brutality, the truth that renders a work of
extraordinary fiction." --Nicholas Miriello, Los Angeles Review of
Books
"This magnificent tour de force will hold a prominent place in the
literature of compassionate outrage. . . . Shepard, a writer of
extraordinary historical vision, psychological acuity, and searing
irony, presents a profoundly moving portrait of Korczak; explores,
with awe, our instinct to adapt and survive; and through the
evolving consciousness of his phenomenally commanding young
narrator, exposes the catastrophic impact of war and genocide on
children." --Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review)
"Remarkable, heartrending and hopeful." --Debra M. Rosser-Hogben,
LancasterOnline
"Shepard's gift for drawing out the most elemental, human
narratives against a backdrop of tremendous scale reaches its apex
in The Book of Aron." --Benjamin Rybeck, Kirkus Reviews
"The Book of Aron ennobles unimaginable suffering through the gift
of art." --Harvey Freedenberg, Shelf-Awareness
"Beautiful, harrowing. . .The words fall like thunderclaps."
--Marcia Menter, More magazine
"Shepard has created a stark masterpiece. His brilliant, iconic
book ranks with the best literature that explores the dark side of
the human soul." --Linda Diebel, The Toronto Star
"Understated and devastating. . . . an exhaustively researched,
pitch-perfect novel exploring the moral ambiguities of survival [in
which] ordinary people reveal dimensions that are extraordinarily
cruel or kind." --Kirkus Reviews (starred)
"Nothing less than a small masterpiece. . . . Anyone who gets
spellbound by Jim Shepard's incomparable prose might be tempted to
concluded that the essentials have not been said until now, in this
book. . . . The narrative is imbued with death-defying humor and
unsentimental, with an almost defiant tone that feels both
authentic and paradoxically comforting." - Eva Johansson, Svenska
Dagbladet
"Moving and powerful. . . . Shepard shows how, even in the worst
circumstances, some people maintained their dignity and humanity.
That message resonates even after the horrific ending." --Rabbi
Rachel Esserman, The Reporter (Jewish Federation of Greater
Binghampton)
"The story of what happened to children in the Holocaust is not for
the faint-hearted. A fictional, first-person narrative from the
point of view of a Jewish child in Warsaw--in fact, a child in Dr.
Janusz Korczak's well-known orphanage in the Warsaw Ghetto--is very
brave. And a heartbreaking historical novel that ends in Treblinka
may not be what many readers are expecting from a novelist and
short-story writer whose ironic touch is often comedic. But Jim
Shepard has written a Holocaust novel that stands with the most
powerful writing on that terrible subject." --John Irving
"Heartbreaking but never sentimental, comic but never unserious,
terrifying but always engrossing, The Book of Aron brings us face
to face with the unimaginable, actual truth." --Daniel Handler
"Heart-breaking, shattering, charming and brilliant--there isn't
one word that isn't the young boy's. Jim Shepard has written some
of the best books I've read and The Book of Aron is his best."
--Roddy Doyle
"The Book of Aron is a novel of profound and delicate
simplicity--passivity, almost--but one which calmly and indelibly
delivers the bluntest of impacts. In other words, it's a knock-out
(though you never saw it coming.)" --Jim Crace
"This moving novel bears witness to human complexity with an
uncompromising compassion. It is a testament not only to Janusz
Korczak and the children in the Warsaw Ghetto but to every child
abandoned in war. History must open our hearts to the present and
this is Jim Shepard's powerful achievement." --Anne Michaels,
author of Fugitive Pieces
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