The Journey: A Novel

by H. G. Adler

Other authorsPeter Filkins (Translator)

Paperback, 2009

Status

Available

Call number

833.914

Genres

Collection

Your library

Publication

Modern Library (2009), Paperback, 336 pages

Description

Here is “a rich and lyrical masterpiece”–notes Peter Constantine–the first translation of a lost treasure by acclaimed author H. G. Adler, a survivor of Theresienstadt and Auschwitz. Written in 1950, after Adler’s emigration to England, The Journey was ignored by large publishing houses after the war and not released in Germany until 1962. Depicting the Holocaust in a unique and deeply moving way, and avoiding specific mention of country or camps–even of Nazis and Jews–The Journey is a poetic nightmare of a family’s ordeal and one member’s survival. Led by the doctor patriarch Leopold, the Lustig family finds itself “forbidden” to live, enduring in a world in which “everyone was crazy, and once they finally recognized what was happening it was too late.” Linked by its innovative style to the work of James Joyce and Virginia Woolf, The Journey portrays the unimaginable in a way that anyone interested in recent history and modern literature must read.… (more)

Media reviews

New York Times

I’ve read a lot of books, but nothing quite like this one. An attempt to use the instruments of 20th-century literature to depict the dislocations of spirit and consciousness caused by the genocide against the Jews, its style could be called Holocaust modernism, an improbable formulation if ever

there was one.

Show Less

User reviews

LibraryThing member JohnJGaynard

If you have read quite a few books about the Holocaust, you will probably find this one interesting. But if you're coming for the first time to reading about how people experienced, and sometimes survived, the horrors of the WWII death camps, you may find that there is not enough background

information in this novel to give you a full picture.

Show Less

1 more

LibraryThing member jwhenderson

The Journey is a poetic nightmare about a family's ordeal and the survival of one member. The Lustig family, led by patriarch Leopold, is "forbidden" to live, surviving in a society where "everyone was mad, and once they finally grasped what was going on, it was too late." It portrays the

unfathomable in a way that is both intriguing and enlightening to the modern reader, similar to the work of James Joyce and Virginia Woolf.

Show Less

Fewer