  | Book Details Title: To the Edge of Sorrow: A Novel |
Book DescriptionReview “Surviving the horrors of the Holocaust, Appelfeld suggests with characteristic terseness, entails more than simply the fight to keep breathing. . . . The partisans make it their goal not only to preserve their past, but also to secure their future by rescuing as many Jews as possible. Their struggle is a moving one.” —Jordana Horn, The New York Times Book Review “Appelfeld constructs his characters with a sensitive grace and humanistic depth; they are luminous concoctions, awhirl with mysteries and passions, at once sentimental and tragic . . . To the Edge of Sorrow is ultimately a work of neat, almost hermetic resonances.” —Tablet Magazine “In sharp yet affectless language, Aharon Appelfeld, one of Israel’s most honored novelists, has created a created a group of brave, loyal, generous, and intellectually disputatious Jewish partisans.” —New York Journal of Books“In this spirited novel set in Ukraine near the end of World War II, Appelfeld describes the daily hardships and travails of a band of Jewish resistance fighters in near-reportorial detail. A powerful tale of lives lived amid the duress and horrors of war that is unflinching in its authenticity.” —Publishers Weekly“To the Edge of Sorrow is immediately recognizable as Appelfeld’s, through its spare, eerily understated approach, which records atrocities from a grim remove. Unlike many of the brilliantly allusive author’s other novels, this one makes explicit reference to the Holocaust, but there’s still a dreamlike quality at work . . . The story moves toward its climax with the usual disquieting force. Another haunting and heartbreaking tale of the Holocaust from one who survived it.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred) Read more About the Author AHARON APPELFELD is the author of more than forty works of fiction and nonfiction, including The Iron Tracks, Until the Dawn’s Light (both winners of the National Jewish Book Award), The Story of a Life (winner of the Prix Médicis Étranger), and Badenheim 1939. Other honors he has received include the Giovanni Boccaccio Literary Prize, the Nelly Sachs Prize, the Israel Prize, the Bialik Prize, and the MLA Commonwealth Award. Blooms of Darkness won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2012 and was short-listed for the Man Booker International Prize in 2013. Born in Czernowitz, Bukovina (now part of Ukraine), in 1932, Appelefeld died in Israel in 2018. Read more Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. 1 My name is Edmund, and I’m seventeen years old. Since last spring we’ve been inching our way over these hills: most of them bare, some sparsely wooded. The bald patches in the forest make our life difficult, but we’ve gotten good at camouflage and deception, and we’ve learned how to stay close to the ground, utilizing blind spots to surprise the enemy. The enemy knows it is dealing with damaged, resolute people; it unleashes its well-trained fighters, assisted by gendarmes and local farmers, who act as informants. We will not be easily defeated. Daylight is a problem, but the night belongs to us. We also need to be very cautious at night, but over time we’ve learned the advantages of darkness. There’s nothing like lying in ambush on summer nights: you’re on high alert, picking up every sound, poised to strike like a panther. At the end of the summer, the commander decided that we had to leave this place and head toward the wetlands, to the swamps and the lakes. Such a move would distance us from the fields and orchards that provide our vital needs but would give us several clear advantages: stagnant water is an obstacle, and an army is not eager to plod through swamps, cut off from its headquarters. During the day, we are dug in and camouflaged, and we advance at night. Progress is slow but steady. Each day brings us closer to the goal. On the last few nights we could smell the water and celebrated quietly. But we must never rest on our laurels; the enemy is vigilant and follows us always. They try to outflank us and block the way to the wetlands. We outsmart them and ambush them. Our calculations have worked out so far, and we haven’t suffered many casualties, but who knows how this bitter struggle will end. At the beginning of September, we arrived at the ridge overlooking Lake Tanura, a long lake surrounded by boulders. The previous day, the commander had sent an experienced squad to prepare rafts; they reached their destination, cut down trees, and when we arrived, a few small rafts awaited us on the water. Several fighters went out on the first raft to check the opposite shore. We watched them row, ready to provide covering fire and to help them. The crossing was undisturbed. We saw them land, spread out, and carefully survey the area. After two hours, they signaled us to launch the remaining rafts. The little rafts floated back and forth, carrying people and equipment. By the way, our equipment is not minimal; it includes hammers, knives, axes, saws, cooking utensils, and food. Not to worry, everything is well packed and travels with us from place to place, supervised by Hermann Cohen, about whom I will have more to say when the time comes. By midnight we were all on the other bank. We saw right away that this was different territory, covered with thick vegetation and smelling heavily of dampness. 2 Ever since I joined the fighters, I’ve changed beyond recognition. The commander promises us that if we try hard, train diligently, and follow orders precisely, at the end of the course we’ll be fighters. Fighters do not complain; they grit their teeth and do not pity themselves. Just one year ago I was a student, a teenager of average height with eyeglasses, and until last year I excelled at school. I don’t want to talk now about last year, when I was a tangle of contradictions. Presumably things will become clear when the time comes, but I will say this, my parents were greatly pained by the decline in my studies. My report card glittered with high grades during my time at high school. I was my parents’ pride and joy, but suddenly my life veered off course, and their quiet happiness turned into shame. They were periodically called to the school and stood mutely before the vice principal, unable to offer a word in my defense. The teachers grieved alongside my parents over my failure, especially the math and Latin teachers. “What happened?” my humiliated father would ask in despair. “Nothing,” I would say, over and over. “Why aren’t you studying like you used to; something must have happened.” The war was at our doorstep. People ran around in the streets, trying to escape the trap, but my parents were sunk in their depression. The decline in my studies concerned them more than the imminent danger. In those days I was blind and merciless. I felt that my parents were drowning in their own world and blocking my way. I didn’t speak up or make excuses, but without meaning to I was pouring salt on their wounds. * Now they are far away from me, and I’m here. Sometimes it seems that everything that has happened to me in these past months is a nightmare to be deciphered in the future. I will undoubtedly be found guilty, which is why I try hard to obey orders and be a flawless fighter. The training is exhausting. The commander has no pity for stragglers; he demands extra effort, and weakness is forbidden. Those among us who do not meet his standards guard the base and help with the cooking. They chop wood and gather twigs for bedding. Fighters, the commander calls us. Our training includes long runs, hurdling over obstacles, climbing ropes, advancing correctly in forested areas and swamps, carrying heavy loads. More than once, I collapsed, and had it not been for friends who supported me, I doubt I would have met all the demands. I look in the water, and to my surprise I don’t recognize myself. My face has filled out and reddened, and my shoulders are broader. In a sheepskin coat I look more like a young farmer than a gymnasium student. My hands are rougher, too. I’ve lost my previous quickness; a different quickness guides my steps. I can bend scraps of tin and iron, break poles, dig a trench in minutes. I doubt my parents would recognize me, and if they did, I wonder how they’d react. Deep in my heart, my transformation makes me happy. Every success in training, every compliment, makes me swell with pride, and I feel that on the battlefield, face-to-face with the enemy, I will perform to my commanders’ satisfaction. * The wetlands. Is this home base or the start of the journey? We press on through the thick foliage, where the darkness is greater than the light. Progress sometimes means strenuous chopping of trees, all hands clearing the path. I do not complain; I accept the difficulties as a duty and atonement for sin. The training exercises and ambushes do not weaken me. I assume that when the time comes, not far off, we will become forest creatures, and the trees and bushes will wrap us in a warm, wide mantle. There’s no point wasting time with fantasies; better to clean the weapon, fix what’s left of my shoes. The soles are torn, and I tie them with string. That’s how it is for nearly all of us. Were it not for the cold nights, it would be easier, but the cold and wet are unrelenting. Thank God for the whispering coals that keep our clothes a little dry. Read more Customers Review: The novel is a well done story of people forced by circumstances beyond their control into a horror beyond any one’s dreams, or probably nightmares. It is told in first person by a young boy named Edmund who at 17 years of age is swept mercilessly from the life of a student living peacefully with his loving parents into the role of a killer. The story begins with Edmund and his parents being force by their captors into boarding a train. The train is to take the family to a concentration camp and the captors German soldiers under the orders of Adolf Hitler. Edmund is told by his parents to run away from the train and hide someplace. He does so due to the prodding by his mother and father and in his traveling away meets a group of other people, all Jews. that are seeking to hide from the soldiers for them. The style of the narration by Edmund and reactions of other people in the group that he meets and joins is blase and describes the horrors they live with in a manner that makes them just everyday occurrences. In traveling away from the enemy and their own city they settle on an elevated area and convert it into a defensive position. A member of the group begins drilling them in order to convert peaceful people into a group that can use weapons and fight against soldiers hunting them. They begin raiding homes and farmhouses in the area around them in order to pick up food and clothing. They use weapons taken from the soldiers that they kill as their own and expand their fighting ability.All the while everyone involved just dreams of a day when the enemy is defeated and they can return to a normalcy that is in a distant past. The group also begins to raid trains taking people to concentration camps until they can no longer feed and care for more people. The question posed is can these individuals including a young teen like Edmund ever really return to a normal life or they marked by their forced experiences to be perpetually haunted by what has been forced on them. I came away from this read with a feeling that I have just dealt with something that will stay with me for a long long time whether I like it or not. | |
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