THE BOOK FAIR

Profound, poetic, cerebral, the novel reflects on the memory of the Holocaust through the first subsequent generation of survivors and questions the future perception of the horrific event.  Matthiessen intellectually explores the phenomenon of anti-Semitism that led to the Holocaust, peering into enormity of the Crime, the insensitivity to the Crime and the insensibility of the Crime.   

The first chapter so intense and so disturbing; however, the reader leans in for more.  What can be said of ignorant Polish youth who know little of their city (Cracow) and history of their country, yet who, though have never met a Jew, spout snide comments of Jews.

Set in Auschwitz in 1996, an eclectic group of individuals desire to “bear witness” to the suffering at Auschwitz.  As the individuals on the retreat labor to understand, (each wrapped in his/her own sorrow), the incomprehensible evil done at Auschwitz, some rationalize, some blame, and some accept responsibility.

Icy cold images of snow-covered, barren fields set against dark, bricked buildings that once held prisoners, renders the sense of loneliness and despair.  Symbolically, the guests partake in meals of soups and dry bread.  In one event, the author juxtaposes the uncanny, innate spark of unquenchable desire for life, even in the face of the most horrific knowledge of brutality, and in the midst of one of the most notorious settings.

Through character development, the author analyzes the stigma of being Jewish in an anti-Semitic world, where the Jews of Europe, misunderstood, set apart, accused, and hounded to their end, were then murdered without conscious in death camps across Europe.