About the Author

H. G. Adler was the author of twenty-six books of fiction, poetry, philosophy, and history. A survivor of the Holocaust, Adler later settled in England and began writing novels about his experience, The Journey being the first of six works of fiction. Working as a freelance writer and teacher throughout his life, Adler died in London in 1988.

Peter Filkins is an acclaimed translator and the recipient of a Berlin Prize fellowship in 2005 from the American Academy in Berlin, among other honors. He teaches writing and literature at Bard College at Simon's Rock in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.

Reviews

“H.G. Adler’s works . . . survive as a magnificent achievement of courage, art, and the stubborn will to survive.”—Peter Demetz, Sterling Professor Emeritus of Germanic Language and Literature, Yale University

“A masterpiece . . . For me, Adler has restored hope to modern literature.”—Elias Canetti, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature


“As important a find as Irène Némirovsky’s Suite Française, and as well translated into English, it is indeed, as Veza Canetti wrote to the author in 1962, ‘too beautiful for words and too sad.’ ”—Sander L. Gilman, author of Jurek Becker: A Life in Five Worlds

“A tribute to the survival of art and a poignant teaching in the art of survival. I tend to shy away from Holocaust fiction, but this book helps redeem an all-but-impossible genre.”—Harold Bloom

"H.G. Adler's works . . . survive as a magnificent achievement of courage, art, and the stubborn will to survive."-Peter Demetz, Sterling Professor Emeritus of Germanic Language and Literature, Yale University

"A masterpiece . . . For me, Adler has restored hope to modern literature."-Elias Canetti, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature


"As important a find as Irene Nemirovsky's Suite Francaise, and as well translated into English, it is indeed, as Veza Canetti wrote to the author in 1962, 'too beautiful for words and too sad.' "-Sander L. Gilman, author of Jurek Becker: A Life in Five Worlds

"A tribute to the survival of art and a poignant teaching in the art of survival. I tend to shy away from Holocaust fiction, but this book helps redeem an all-but-impossible genre."-Harold Bloom

This unusual and noteworthy novel is a fictional account by a German-speaking Jew who survived the Holocaust. Adler (1910-88) was born in Prague and was imprisoned in Theresienstadt (Ruhenthal) and Auschwitz. In his wanderings after the war, he later came to consider himself a freelancer and teacher. The story, if such a diffuse presentation may be called that, follows the Lustig family from their internment by the Germans until the demise of every member but one. Adler (Theresienstadt, 1941-1945: The Face of a Slave Society) employs a kind of montage, eschewing a straightforward narrative. Jeremy Adler, the author's son, provides an afterword in which he explains, "As with a ballad, the book contains the refrainlike repetition of numerous central motifs." There is great beauty in this writing, though general readers will find it difficult to follow. The text has been masterfully translated by Filkins, who provides an essential introduction. The German text of the novel is from a 1999 reissue by Zsolnay Verlag. Strongly recommended for all Holocaust collections.--Edward Cone, New York Copyright 2008 Reed Business Information.