Description

‘A fine and powerful piece of work… Dark, at times cryptic, and hugely energetic’ Irish Times

“No!” is the first word of this haunting novel. It is how a middle-aged Hungarian-Jewish writer answers an acquaintance who asks him if he has a child, and it is how he answered his wife years earlier when she told him that she wanted one. The loss, longing and regret that haunt the years between these two ‘No!’s give rise to one of the most eloquent meditations ever written on the Holocaust. As Kertesz’s narrator addresses the child he couldn’t bear to bring into the world, he takes readers on a mesmerising, lyrical journey through his life, from his childhood to Auschwitz to his failed marriage.

Publisher Review

Tim Wilkinson is a seriously good translator...I may have given the impression that this is harrowing, and it is; but it has its moments of great, consoling insight, is about far more than just the Holocaust and in its own haunting way provides comfort for the afflicted -- Nicholas Lezard * Guardian * For taking us somewhere no other writer has, Kertesz fully deserved his Nobel Prize * Independent * While the average reader cannot pretend truly to understand the reality of those who suffered in concentration camps, Kertesz draws us one step closer * Observer * Stunning... resembles such other memorably declamatory fictions as Camus' The Fall and Dostoyevsky's Notes from Underground * Kirkus Reviews * Condenses a lifetime into a story told in a single night...exhilarating for [its] creative energy * World Literature *