Synopses & Reviews
Haya Tedeschi sits alone in Gorizia, in northeastern Italy, surrounded by a basket of photographs and newspaper clippings. Now an old woman, she waits to be reunited after sixty-two years with her son, fathered by an SS officer and stolen from her by the German authorities as part of Himmlers clandestine
Lebensborn project.
Haya reflects on her Catholicized Jewish familys experiences, dealing unsparingly with the massacre of Italian Jews in the concentration camps of Trieste. Her obsessive search for her son leads her to photographs, maps, and fragments of verse, to testimonies from the Nuremberg trials and interviews with second-generation Jews, and to eyewitness accounts of atrocities that took place on her doorstep. From this broad collage of material and memory arises the staggering chronicle of Nazi occupation in northern Italy.
Written in immensely powerful language and employing a range of astonishing conceptual devices, Trieste is a novel like no other. Daša Drndić has produced a shattering contribution to the literature of twentieth-century history.
Review
"At once a novel, fictional biography, history and meta-fictional commentary, GÖTZ AND MEYER, composed in a single hallucinatory paragraph . . . [is] a masterful addition to the literature of the Holocaust and a fascinating philosophical meditation on that enormity."
Review
U.K. PRAISE FOR GOTZ AND MEYER
"A harrowing yet very beautiful novel . . . written with a poetic and fastidious precision reminiscent of the great W. G. Sebald."--The Literary Review
"Heartbreaking, sardonic and brutal, written at an unrelenting pace with great compassion and wild humor."--The Independent
Review
"GÖTZ AND MEYER has a resonance beyond its own times." Review
PRAISE FOR
GÖTZ AND MEYER "
Götz and Meyer has a resonance beyond its own times."Richard Eder,
The Boston Globe"Albahari gives us a dazzling meditation on history, memory, identity and the nature of evil and on the hearts and minds of two ordinary men who cared more about their truck than about the lives of thousands of innocent human beings." Francine Prose, People
Review
"A work of European high culture...Even at their most lurid, Drndic’s sentences remain coldly dignified. And so does Ellen Elias-Bursac’s imperturbably elegant translation." –The New York Times Book Review
"A palimpsest of personal quest and the historical atrocities of war...Undeniably raw and mythical...Trieste evolves as a novel in the documentary style of the German writer W.G. Sebald, but also as a memorial of names, and as a novel about one woman's attempt to find order in her life. And as a book of events that have made the last century infamous for the ages, a book that, if it moves you as it moved me, you will have to set down now and then, to breathe, to blink and blink and say to yourself and whatever gods you might believe in, please, oh, please please please, never again." – Alan Cheuse, NPR
"Trieste…explores the 20th century’s darkest chapter in an original way, both thematically and stylistically, without ever diluting the disaster...So unflinchingly does Drndic present her detail that after certain passages concerning freight-train journeys, gas chambers and euthanasia centers, it pays to put the book down and take a break and gulps of fresh air. Potent, candid writing, while deserving of praise, is not always the easiest to digest...Trieste is an exceptional reading experience and an early contender for book of the year." –Minneapolis Star Tribune
"An extraordinarily rewarding novel...Rich." –Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
"A darkly hypnotic kaleidoscope of a book...Drndic has in her own way composed an astonishment that extracts light from darkness." –The Jewish Daily Forward
"Although this is fiction, it is also a deeply researched historical documentary. Haya's life story is woven artfully into a broader tale of the twentieth century's atrocities. The book begins gently, introducing us to the archiepiscopal see of Gorizia in a manner reminiscent of WG Sebald . . . It is a masterpiece." –A.N. Wilson, Financial Times
"Trieste achieves a factographical poetry, superbly rendered by Ellen Elias-Bursac, implying that no one in Axis-occupied Europe stood more than two degrees from atrocity." –Times Literary Supplement
"Trieste is more than just a novel, it's a document that should be compulsory reading in secondary schools ... Books like this are necessary whilst there's still a glimmer of hope that eloquently reminding us of the past may prevent its repetition." –Bookbag
"Trieste is a massive undertaking. It swings from stomach-churning but compelling testimonials from former concentration camp workers to fluid fictional prose." –Irish Independent on Sunday
"In this documentary fiction, the private and public happen at once, large and small scale, imagined with just the same biographical precision. Haya sits dazzled in the cinema, lost in the unbelievable glamour on the screen; meanwhile, neighbors are disappearing. . . . The picture Trieste offers is cumulative -- so is its effect. For a reader with a taste for tidy narrative, its wilfulness can be maddening, and yet the multifarious elements that comprise Haya's story and its grand context are an incredibly dense and potent mixture, too." –The Independent
"Trieste is a brilliant, original conceptualized novel consisting of fragmented memories and a series of concentrated history lessons that will challenge a reader with its irregular construction and seeming lack of continuity. It may not be easy but it is well worth reading and will assuredly linger in memory." –BookBrowse
"Powerful, disturbing, original...Author Dasa Drndic uses her technique with painful effectiveness." –New York Journal of Books
"Drndic’s monumental work about a hitherto rarely discussed aspect of the Holocaust, and about the ongoing consequences of fascism, is not for the fainthearted, but its seamless combination of beautifully told story and relentless harsh documentation makes for a deeply engaging and unforgettable read." –Jewish Renaissance
"A powerful and original testimony, moving and hypnotic." –Historical Novel Review
"Richly textured reminisces...Drndic's themes, use of history, and narrative technique invite favorable comparisons to W.G. Sebald." –Publishers Weekly
"Outrage, horror, and grief simmer beneath the surface of this gripping novel...An unbearable, unusual, and unforgettable tribute to a very dark period of history...Highly recommended, this story’s gripping historical approach calls to mind the work of Norman Mailer and Don DeLillo." –Library Journal, starred
"Trieste’s originality lies not just in its structure and forceful, unflinching imagery—translator Elias-Bursa deserves acclaim as well—but also in how it brings the lingering effects of the Nazis’ merciless racial policies forward into the present." –Booklist
"An epic, heart-rending saga from the Croatian novelist about a forgotten corner of the Nazi Holocaust...A brilliant artistic and moral achievement worth reading." –Kirkus, starred
Synopsis
"Believing they were being taken to a better camp, Belgrade's Jews would climb into the truck with a sense of relief. Mainly women, children and the elderly, they expected a long and uncomfortable trip but, after crossing the border, their journey would come to an abrupt end. Here the drivers would get out and attach a hose from the exhaust to the back of the truck...
Over the course of a few months in 1942, the Nazis systematically exterminated the majority of Serbia's Jews using carbon monoxide and specially designed trucks.
The only information the narrator of this bleakly comic novel can find about the summer when his relatives disappeared is the names of the truck drivers: Gotz and Meyer. During his research, he becomes fascinated by the unknowable characters and daily lives of these men. But his imagination proves a dangerous force, and his obsession with the past threatens to overwhelm him.
Synopsis
Götz and Meyer, two noncommissioned SS officers, are entrusted with an assignment, "not a big one," but one that "requires efficiency." Their task is to transport five thousand concentration camp prisoners, one hundred at a time, in a hermetically sealed truck in which they are gassed. As Albahari's anonymous narrator, a teacher, obsessively pursues the truth of this systematic annihilation, he shares his findings with his students. Their school bus becomes that truck, and as the memory of Belgrade's lost Jewish souls is evoked, the students are bewildered. Their teacher, exhausted as much by the task of making history come alive as by the toll his research has taken on him, is finally overwhelmed by the horror of his own imaginings.
A masterfully written story of the mass murder of Serbia's Jews in 1942, full of compassion, irony, and lyricism.
Synopsis
Götz and Meyer, two noncommissioned SS officers, are entrusted with an assignment, not a big one,” but one that requires efficiency.” Their task is to transport prisoners from a concentration camp near Belgrade in a hermetically sealed truck, in which they are asphyxiated.
The nameless narrator of Götz and Meyer, a Jewish schoolteacher, discovers Wilhelm Götz and Erwin Meyer while researching the deaths of his relatives. Overwhelmed by the horror of his discoveries as they become entangled with his own feverish imaginings, he organizes a class trip. The school bus becomes Götz and Meyers truck, and the teacher and his students merge with Belgrades lost souls in a sacred act of remembering.
Synopsis
"A masterpiece" (A.N. Wilson), this many-layered novel of WWII combines fiction with a Sebaldian collage of facts to explore the fate of Italian Jews under Nazi occupation, through the intimate story of a mother's search for her son.
About the Author
DAVID ALBAHARI is the prize-winning author of several collections of short stories and novels. He was for many years the editor-in-chief of Pismo, a magazine of world literature, and lived in Belgrade. He now lives in Calgary, Canada.
CITATION: "GTZ AND MEYER has a resonance beyond its own times."(Richard Eder, Boston Globe, Jan 1 2006 )
CITATION: "At once a novel, fictional biography, history and meta-fictional commentary, GTZ AND MEYER, composed in a single hallucinatory paragraph . . . [is] a masterful addition to the literature of the Holocaust and a fascinating philosophical meditation on that enormity."(Jason Thompson, San Francisco Chronicle, Dec 25 2005 )