THE BOOK FAIR

Review:

In the novel, the “City of Women”, David R. Gillham poses the moral question of an individual’s responsibility to confront the face of evil.  Gillham also poses the moral dilemma of one’s actions to save one’s self over a fellow human being.   Gillham’s novel takes place in Berlin, Germany, during WWII, in the year of 1943, with flashbacks of earlier years.  Gillham proposes to show a microcosm of Germany through his characters, both Jewish and "Aryan," who suffer from the general fear of whom one can trust and whom one cannot. 

David Gillham focuses the novel on the unusual subject of “griefers.”  After the mass deportations of Jews in Germany to death camps, only a small number of Jews remained.  In 1943, the Germans began using Jews they caught for deportation, to catch the last remaining Jews.  These Jews were known as “Griefers,” or snatchers.