Synopses & Reviews
"[Aaron's Leap] must count among the best by contemporary Czech young authors."Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
"Aaron's Leap takes you on an epic journey, which is also a very intimate and personal storyentertaining, touching, and brutally honest. . . . A great book." Agnieszka Holland, Academy Award-nominated writer and director of Europa Europa and HBO guest director of Treme and The Wire
"[A] brilliant novel." Ivan Klíma, Franz Kafka Prize-winning author of Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light and My Crazy Century
In a Europe torn by war and revolution, Berta Altman comes of age as a gifted artist and independent woman. Her search for freedom leads her from Vienna to the Bauhaus school, Weimar Berlin, and Prague. As she encounters the celebrated artists of her time, she engages in aesthetic and ideological battles that will prove to have life-and-death consequences. Based on the real-life story of Friedl Dicker-Brandeis who taught art to children in the Nazi transport camp of Terezín and died in Auschwitz, Aaron's Leap is framed by the lens of a twenty-first-century Israeli film crew that unknowingly unleashes the haunting force of buried history.
Magdaléna Platzová was raised in Prague and has lived in Washington, DC, and New York City, where she taught literature at NYU. She currently lives in Lyon, France. When first published in Czech, Aaron's Leap was a Lidové Noviny Book of the Year Award finalist. It is her first book to be published in English.
Craig Cravens is the translator of My Crazy Century by Ivan Klíma.
Review
Lidové Noviny Book of the Year Award FinalistBeautifully written, with masterful creation of atmosphere and sculpting of the main characters. The translation by Craig Cravens is excellent and true to Platzovás artful prose.” World Literature Today
The characters in this book are multi-dimensional and come to life through their struggles to understand the purpose of art and the political opinions of the people around them in a time of war and uncertainty. Art and modern thought are at the center of these characters lives and they find ways to seek truth through art, love, and friendship, inviting the reader to join them on this journey of self-discovery.” Jewish Book Council
Just as a well-curated collection of art has the ability to capture the zeitgeist of a given era with great economy, [Aarons Leap] manages to position the reader in a present that is informed by the distinct motifs of the past.” Necessary Fiction
A powerful, sobering meditation on both the human condition and the nurturing of the artistic soul that closes the distance between far-flung eras. . . . Platzová expertly illustrates the connectivity of the past, present and future.” CCLaP: Chicago Center for Literature and Photography
A powerful book that shows the continuous ebb and flow of human life and of self-discovery.” Akashic Insider
A moving, humane tale of life lived in historys long shadow.” Booklist (starred review)
Platzovás prose is as sharp and effective as the angles of an expressionist monument. . . . [A] powerfully elegiac novel.” Publishers Weekly
A Czech novel about art, death and sex set against the backdrop of the Holocaust and never-ending war . . . The reader comes to connect with and care for [Platzovás] characters as more than mouthpieces for history.” Kirkus Reviews
Aarons Leap takes you on an epic journey, which is also a very intimate and personal storyentertaining, touching and brutally honest. Her characters are full of compassion and tenderness, but are never sentimental. Its a great book.” AGNIESZKA HOLLAND, Academy Award-nominated writer and director of Europa Europa and guest director of HBOs The Wire and Netflixs House of Cards
Beautifully written, absorbing, and impeccably researched.” ZUZANA JUSTMAN, Emmy Award-winning writer and director of Voices of the Children
This young authors book immediately caught my interest for its narrative mastery and remarkably skillful identification with the complex atmosphere of the interbellum era . . . [A] brilliant novel.” IVAN KLÍMA, Franz Kafka Prize-winning author of Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light and My Crazy Century
Told in clear and beautiful prose, Aarons Leap is a deeply moving portrait of love, sacrifice, and the transformative power of art in a time of brutal uncertainty.” SIMON VAN BOOY, author of The Illusion of Separateness
Synopsis
A multigenerational saga inspired by Bauhaus artists and the impact of the Holocausts lingering legacy on their children and protégés
Synopsis
A multigenerational saga inspired by Bauhaus artists and the impact of the Holocaust's lingering legacy on their children and prot g s
In a Europe torn by war and revolution, Berta Altmann comes of age as a gifted artist and independent woman. Her search for freedom leads her from Vienna to the Bauhaus school, Weimar Berlin, and Prague. As she encounters the celebrated artists of her time, she engages in aesthetic and ideological battles that will prove to have life-and-death consequences.
Based on the real-life story of Friedl Dicker-Brandeis who taught art to children in the Nazi transport camp of Terez n and died in Auschwitz, Aaron's Leap is framed by the lens of a 21st-century Israeli film crew that unknowingly unleashes the haunting force of buried history.
Synopsis
Told in clear and beautiful prose,
Aarons Leap is a deeply moving portrait of love, sacrifice, and the transformative power of art in a time of brutal uncertainty.”
SIMON VAN BOOY, author of
The Illusion of SeparatenessBased on the real-life story of Bauhaus artist Friedl Dicker-Brandeis, Aarons Leap is framed by the lens of a twenty first-century Israeli film crew delving into the extraordinary life of a woman who taught art to children in the Nazi transport camp of Terezín and died in Auschwitz. Aided by the granddaughter of one of the artists pupils, the filmmakers begin to uncover buried secrets from a time when personal and artistic decisions became matters of life-and-death. Spanning a century of Central European history, the novel evokes the founding impulses, theories, and personalities of the European Modernist movement (with characters modeled after Oskar Kokoschka, Alma Mahler and Franz Werfel) and shows what it takes to grapple with a troubled history, leap” into the unknown, and dare to be oneself.
Magdaléna Platzová was raised in Prague and has lived in Washington, DC and New York City, where she taught literature at NYU, and now lives in Lyon, France. She is the author of a childrens book, two collections of short stories, and three novels, including Aarons Leap, a Lidové Noviny Book of the Year Award finalist, hailed by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung as a novel that must be counted among the best written by contemporary Czech writers.” It is her first book to be published in English.
About the Author
Magdaléna Platzová is the author of a childrens book, two collections of short stories, and three novels, including
Aarons Leap, a 2006 Lidové Noviny Book of the Year Award finalist, hailed by the
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (
Frankfurt General Newspaper) as a novel that must be counted among the best written by contemporary Czech writers.” It is her first book to be published in English.
Platzová grew up in Prague, studied in Washington, DC and England, and received her MA in Philosophy at Charles University in Prague. In her twenties, she was an actress in a Franco-Czech theater group and is now a freelance journalist who has worked as an editor and cultural journalist for the Prague-based weekly news magazines Literarni Noviny and Respekt. From 2009 to 2012, she lived in New York, where she taught a course on Franz Kafka at New York Universitys Gallatin School of Individualized Study. Mother of three young children, she now lives in Lyon, France, where her husband works at the WHO Research Institute for Cancer.
Translator Craig Cravens is the author of The Customs and Cultures of the Czech Republic and Slovakia and his translations include My Crazy Century by Ivan Klíma (Grove/Atlantic) and Aarons Leap by Magdaléna Platzová (Bellevue Literary Press). A graduate of Amherst College and Princeton University, he is the president of the North Atlantic Cimrman Association and a Senior Lecturer in the Slavic department at Indiana University in Bloomington.