Aftershocks

Grete Weil;

In this collection of novellas, the author looks beyond the loss of her loved ones and the effect of the era on her fellow Germans to its effects on those who had fled to apparent safety in California, New York, Paris, or even the forests of the Yucatan. Weil compares them to the survivors of the atom-bomb blast who have lived beyond the initial explosion, considered the worst to be over, only to later sicken and die. The fugitives’ lives are damaged, even destroyed physically, by the aftershocks of the Holocaust by their inability to shed the culture of the country from which they have fled, their intense memories of happier times, and the constant intrusion of the ghosts of both victims and persecutors into their attempts to lead new, possibly even happy, lives. The author’s acerbic but rigorously honest gaze spares no one, not even herself, as she once again challenges readers to take stock and ask how they can prevent the addition of further victims of man’s blood lust to what eventually will be called history.

status	Copy #1 (8520): in
genre	Literature and Fiction » Historical Fiction
publisher	David R Godine
publish date	2008
popularity	checked out 0 time(s)