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Title details for To the Edge of Sorrow by Aharon Appelfeld - Available

To the Edge of Sorrow

A Novel

by Aharon Appelfeld
Stuart Schoffman
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available
From "fiction's foremost chronicler of the Holocaust" (Philip Roth), here is a haunting novel about an unforgettable group of Jewish partisans fighting the Nazis during World War II.
Battling numbing cold, ever-present hunger, and German soldiers determined to hunt them down, four dozen resistance fighters—escapees from a nearby ghetto—hide in a Ukrainian forest, determined to survive the war, sabotage the German war effort, and rescue as many Jews as they can from the trains taking them to concentration camps. Their leader is relentless in his efforts to turn his ragtag band of men and boys into a disciplined force that accomplishes its goals without losing its moral compass. And so when they're not raiding peasants' homes for food and supplies, or training with the weapons taken from the soldiers they have ambushed and killed, the partisans read books of faith and philosophy that they have rescued from abandoned Jewish homes, and they draw strength from the women, the elderly, and the remarkably resilient orphaned children they are protecting. When they hear about the advances being made by the Soviet Army, the partisans prepare for what they know will be a furious attack on their compound by the retreating Germans. In the heartbreaking aftermath, the survivors emerge from the forest to bury their dead, care for their wounded, and grimly confront a world that is surprised by their existence—and profoundly unwelcoming.
Narrated by seventeen-year-old Edmund—a member of the group who maintains his own inner resolve with memories of his parents and their life before the war—this powerful story of Jews who fought back is suffused with the riveting detail that Aharon Appelfeld was uniquely able to bring to his award-winning novels.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    January 14, 2020

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781984833433
      • File size: 249999 KB
      • Duration: 08:40:49

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      November 18, 2019
      Set in Ukraine near the end of WWII, this spirited novel from Appelfeld (The Iron Tracks) presents a portrait of a band of Jewish resistance fighters struggling to stay alive. The story is narrated by 17-year-old Edmund, one of several dozen partisans who have escaped transport from a ghetto and fled to the nearby forest. The group is a microcosm of the society they knew—men and women, old and young, with different educations and beliefs. Determined initially to evade a German army in retreat from Russia, the group’s leaders eventually steer them to rescuing Jews from trains bound for concentration camps, a fateful decision with bittersweet consequences. Appelfeld (1932–2018) describes the daily hardships and travails of the partisans in near-reportorial detail and endows all of his characters with sympathetic personalities born out of their discussions of philosophy, the moral choices they make, the books they’ve read, the traditions they celebrate, and their fond memories of life before the war. This powerful tale of lives lived amid the duress and horrors of war is unflinching in its authenticity.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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