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Dec 09, 2013salamanderA rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
This is a haunting, absorbing novel based on documents from the £odz ghetto, unforgettably detailing the years of slow disintegration and betrayal, the loss of control to Nazis by the self-important leader, Chaim Rumkowski, the Eldest of the Jews, who, corrupt himself, repeatedly tries to bargain with them. Full of observations about a world with no possible beyond or future, there are hardpunching vignettes of a cast of individuals, told poetically and in excruciating detail, as they decline into starvation, dream-states, and death. I’ve never read a more impressive book.