A survivor of a Nazi concentration camp struggles to come to terms with her horrible memories of the experience

My Sister, My Antigone

Grete Weil

Literature & Fiction

Avon/Books

From the author of The Bride Price (a New York Times Notable Book of 1992) comes a dark and haunting story of memory, guilt, and the meaning of responsibility. Andreas, a once-promising poet, lives with his bride, Susanne, in postwar Germany. Aalthough surrounded by the trappings of comfort and success, Andreas is obsessed by the memory of Susanne's younger brother, Daniel, whom he had sheltered in Amsterdam, but who was eventually deported by the Gestapo. The war over, Andreas rebuilds his life in the "new" Germany, trying to recapture Daniel through marriage to his sister. But he is unable to write or to find peace, unable to forget his torture over Daniel or the harrowing days and nights of the Occupation. Finally, he returns to Amsterdam to confront his memories of the war it was there that Andreas first recognized the horror inflicted by his own people, as every night he witnessed the round-up of the city's Jews beneath his window. And it was there that he came to the realizations about himself, his past, and his heritage that give this story its profound resonance. Told in a distinctly urgent voice and with a gaze at once acerbic and compassionate, Last Trolley from Beethovenstraat, like The Bride Price, is a "thoughtful, beautifully written exposition on love and fear" (ALA Booklist) by one of Germany's most respected contemporary novelists.

Last Trolley from Beethovenstraat (Verba Mundi (Hardcover))

Genre Fiction

Verba Mundi

Grete Weil's novels The Bride Price and Last Trolley from Beethovenstraat have displayed her perception of the Holocaust to be unique, highly personal, and unusally forgiving. 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.

Aftershocks: Stories

Meine Schwester Antigone

Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag

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Books by Grete Weil