Fateless

Rating:
Summary: Haunting
Review: I got the German translation of this for Christmas and started reading it immediately. It was so irritating because I had my set expectations of what was going to happen, and here this teenage boy just is living from one moment to the next, not really thinking about what everything means, just enjoying the odd moment of happiness. Just a typical teenage boy.

I couldn't really put the book down, I had to keep on reading, waiting for the other shoe to drop, if you will.

The problem with the book was me - I was expecting the n+1st description of the horrors, and was enticed by the descriptions that have haunted me for days. It has given me a different perspective on the concentration camps, and makes me want to go visit Auschwitz and Buchenwald. We so tend to ignore what was and just carry on with our lives.

I finished it a few days ago, and still have images from the book in my head. It only gets 4 stars, however, because the bit in the sick ward is rather difficult for me to place. Was he part of an experiment? If so, what experiment? If not, what would the reason have been for them to have kept feeding him? There were a number of scenes here that did not really make sense. But over all, the Nobel Prize committee is to be commended for giving us this new perspective on the concentration camps.

Rating:
Summary: Holocaust as Metaphor
Review: I have struggled for my entire life to understand how the Holocaust could have happened; how countries like the United States and Britain turned their backs on Jews desperately trying to escape the pogroms; how one of the oldest and most civilized countries in the world could, within 10 years, reduce one segment of its citizens to vermin suitable only for extermination, with the knowledge and complicity of its entire population.
I was illuminated by an exchange early in "Fateless" between the narrator and a young Jewish girl anguished by the racism she is experiencing. He uses Twain's "The Prince and the Pauper" as an analogy for the anonymity of racism. He tells her about "a beggar and a prince who resembled each other so closely in face and form that one couldn't tell them apart. Out of mere curiosity they exchanged identities, until finally the beggar became a genuine prince and the prince a genuine beggar."
Soon enough, the narrator's passage through the circles of hell in the concentration camps provides us with a chilling glimpse of how quickly and completely ordinary people can assume the roles bestowed on them -- either as "an SS officer with a whip," or as "a Jew destined for slaughter."
The smiling, avuncular policeman plucking Jewish boys off the bus says he likes to deal with "intelligent boys," and as the group of boys grows, they "circled him in a completely uninhibited manner, laughing, just as if we were schoolboys with a teacher on a field trip."
"I was confident that he liked us," the narrator says. "He was also very pleasant."
How softly charming, how gently sloping, is this beginning of an entire civilization's descent into hell.
Now, let's play substitution. Instead of "SS guard" and "Jew," how about "Nigeria" and "woman"? (If you're female, you'll get stoned to death for adultery there.) How about "CIA" and "democratically elected Central American government"? How about "Iraq" and "Kurd"? "Serb" and "Croat"? Or "U.S. oil interests" and "Iraq", for that matter?
Change the name, but the game remains the same. If you're looking for another graphic insight into the Holocaust, you're reading the wrong book. If you're willing to examine the worm-ridden underbelly of human nature, read "Fateless." This is an unblinking look at how easily we humans can become "genuine" racists or "genuine" victims, even though we "resemble each other so closely" that there are more DNA variations between members of the same race than between different races (a scientific fact revealed by the unraveling of the human genome).
It's hard to find any rationale for the brutalities we have committed, and continue to commit, on each other throughout the world. This book helps me to understand this dark side of human nature, this ease with which many of us can wear the bland face of evil or of compliance, given enough incentive. And that incentive, of course, is survival at any cost.

Rating:
Summary: Huck Finn in Buchenwald
Review: I like to use the Nobel Prize for Laterature as a means of discovering new authors. I have had a number of disappointments (Claude Simon and Nadine Gordimer come quickly to mind). I have also had a number of welcome surprizes (Isaac B. Singer, Franz Sillanpaa, and Grazia DeLadda are a few). I checked out Irme Kertesz as soon as I heard of his award last October. I understand that "Fateless" is his best work and it is indeed a good one. It is a Holocaust tale as told through the eyes of a 14 year old boy. Given the author's similar experiences at that age, this would seem to be an autobiographical novel.

This book works well because of the very detached way that all of this shocking story is presented. We get a helpful preview of this detachment as the story teller relates about events and conversations involving his mother and father (who are divorced). His father is going to be "sent away" by the authorities and there is what the boy perceives to be a going away party. His total lack of concern regarding the possible fate awaiting his father and his apparent indifference to whether he is to live with mother or step-mother sets that tone for his discriptions of increasingly macabre scenes. His focus tends to avoid the brutal and center on the entertaining. We, of course, see what he seems to miss but he presents things we would never conceive of. His non-judgemental approach contrasts with our very judgemental perspective challenging us to try and understand his point of view. The author is not attempting to be funny but some may read this book with a sense that it is all in very bad taste. This would be a mistake. This is a story of survival by adaptation. We know the scope of the tragedy but have not lived it. The narrator knows how to live it without understanding the scope of the tragedy. When it is all over, he knows something bad has happened but he prefers to go on surviving.

I have found that the best Holocaust literature is that which leaves us confused; there are no simple explanations to what has happened. This book is a unique approach that leaves us wondering what has happened.

Rating:
Summary: Deserving winner of the Nobel prize
Review: I never heard of Kertesz until I read a Swedish newspaper article about him in July, 2002. It was mentioned that he was a contender for the Nobel prize and I tried in vain to get hold of anything he had written from then until October. No one had ever heard of him here in Norway. I bought the Swedish translation of 'Fateless' immediately after it was announced that he indeed had won the Nobel prize, when it was all over the place, including the airport newsstand I found myself at that week. It was hard to keep reading in the beginning because the naive style of the first person protagonist was so vulnerable that it was almost painful. He keeps his vulnerability for a very long time, and his matter-of-fact narrative about such incomprehensible events is what gives the book its character and strength. Last night I watched an interview with Kertesz, done in connection with the award ceremony, and I was so relieved to see the warm smile on his face.
This book is about the determining event in Kertesz' life. He says himself that it is not possible for him to write about anything except holocaust. He does not seem obsessive and somehow he manages to be totally in your face with appalling detail from life in a concentration camp, and still low-key, like a well-brought up, thoughtful boy from Hungary in the nineteen forties. It is not primarily an autobiography, nor a book about the persecution of the Jews. It is a book about totalitarianism, and about adaptation and survival. Kertesz said in the interview that the protagonist is a child because people are made into children in totalitarian systems. This is a good book, by a good man. I can't wait to read everything else he has ever produced.

Rating:
Summary: A teenager's experience in Auschwitz and Buchenwald
Review: I read it in English and then in Hungarian. Yes,indeed the original reads better but the criticism of the English translation (by a "friend" of the author) is quite unwarranted.
About a year before the end of WW II a Hungarian, secular but nevertheless decidedly Jewish teenager (the author) is seized by Hungarian police and packed off to Auschwitz and from there to Buchenwald. He suffers but he survives and returns home after about a year. Moving but detached, factual, honest and if anything, understated rather than exaggerated. Another masterpiece of genuine holocaust literature. Kertesz got the 2002 Nobel prize in literature; one cannot say he did not deserve it.

Rating:
Summary: A unforgetable book !
Review: I read this book a few hears ago in original language (hungarian) and I really enjoyed it. It is very very powerfull and I recommend it to anybody...

Rating:
Summary: Don't believe the hype
Review: I think it is no wonder Kertesz was relatively unknown in Hungary. I'm usually not into Holocaust novels and read this one only because of all the hype it has got, so I can't compare it to other Holocaust stories, but if I compare it to any other novel I've ever read I would say this is among the worse ones. The characterization is flat and the dreadful events don't seem to have any impact on the hero of the novel, thus fail to evoke emotions in the reader. The only interesting thing is the description of everyday life in a death camp, about which I haven't read more detailed description than this one.

Rating:
Summary: Loss of Innocence
Review: I thought the way this book was written makes it worthy of your attention. The story starts off with a very naive view of the world, which is understandable because it's told from the POV of the main character who is a teenager at the time. As the book progresses, the main character sees first hand the evil of this world and it seems to reflect in the way the story is told. His growth (for lack of a better word) reflects in his description of what is happening around him.

There were a few things that detracted from the book. There was not a lot of dialogue, which meant we viewed everything through the eyes of the main character. Also, the description of the various settings was a bit on the light side and I had difficulty stepping into the story.

Nelson.

Rating:
Summary: Loss of Innocence
Review: I thought the way this book was written makes it worthy of your attention. The story starts off with a very naive view of the world, which is understandable because it's told from the POV of the main character who is a teenager at the time. As the book progresses, the main character sees first hand the evil of this world and it seems to reflect in the way the story is told. His growth (for lack of a better word) reflects in his description of what is happening around him.

There were a few things that detracted from the book. There was not a lot of dialogue, which meant we viewed everything through the eyes of the main character. Also, the description of the various settings was a bit on the light side and I had difficulty stepping into the story.

Nelson.

Rating:
Summary: Children and Horror
Review: I was amazed with the utter candor of the narrator. The story is a blow-by-blow description of the horrors of the Holocaust, all narrated through the eyes of a 15 year old. Few books have described such personal tragedies in such a human way. Kertesz deserved the Nobel for this work. Read the book, its short and really well done.