The Immortal Bartfuss,
New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1988. First Edition. Hardcover. [4], 137, [3] pages. Compliments slip from publisher laid in. Aharon Appelfeld,; born Ervin Appelfeld, February 16, 1932) is an Israeli novelist. Ervin Appelfeld was born in Jadova Commune in the Kingdom of Romania, now Ukraine. In 1941, when he was nine years old, the Romanian Army retook his hometown after a year of Soviet occupation and his mother was murdered. Appelfeld was deported with his father to a Nazi concentration camp in Romanian-controlled Transnistria. He escaped and hid for three years before joining the Soviet army as a cook. After world War II, Appelfeld spent several months in a displaced persons camp in Italy before immigrating to Palestine in 1946, two years before Israel's independence. He was reunited with his father after finding his name on a Jewish Agency list. The father had been sent to a ma'abara (refugee camp) in Be'er Tuvia. The reunion was so emotional that Appelfeld has never been able to write about it. In Israel, Appelfeld made up for his lack of formal schooling and learned Hebrew, the language in which he began to write. His first literary efforts were short stories, but gradually he progressed to novels. He completed his studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, In 2007, Appelfeld's Badenheim 1939 was adapted for the stage and performed at the Gerard Behar Center in Jerusalem. Set in contemporary Israel, The Immortal Bartfuss is perhaps the most profound and powerful portrait of a Holocaust survivor ever drawn. Using the techniques of omission and indirection perfected in such masterpieces as Badenheim 1939 and To the Land of the Cattails, Appelfeld tells the story of Bartfuss, enigmatically "the immortal" because of his experience in the camps. Now locked in a hopeless marriage, Bartfuss struggles to suppress the emotions and recollections he fears and despises, while trying to keep alive the poise, dignity, and compassion essential to a human being. The Immortal Bartfuss is an overwhelming and unforgettable study of a man reduced to his tragic limits. Condition: Very good / very good.
Keywords: Bartfuss, Israel, Jews, Holocaust, Survivor, Concentration Camps, Marriage, Dignity, Compassion, Business, Father, Parent, Emotional Struggles
ISBN: 155584152X
[Book #72541]
Price: $45.00