Chance Survivor - Couverture souple

Kennedy, Andrew Karpati

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 1848611900 ISBN 13 : 9781848611900

Editeur : Shearsman Books, 2012

Synopsis

A personal story caught up in the dark history of the mid-twentieth century begins with a lost child's cry. A dozen years of sheltered life in a Hungarian middle-class family-a vanished age of peace and luxury behind precariously concealed Jewish origins-is wrenched into persecution by the Nazi invasion of March 1944 - the overcrowded ghetto, the horror of the brickworks camp and deportation follow. The author's evocative account of what it was like to travel on one of Eichmann's trains in reprinted here from The Observer. Thanks to an SS transport officer's error, the deportation train ends up not in Auschwitz, as intended, but (via a transit camp offering real showers, not gas) on the outskirts of Vienna, where children worked only six hours a day producing anti-aircraft guns for the Third Reich. The boy's father dies, his mother and sister survive, as does he despite under-nourishment, typhoid, air raids and the dangers of late-war Nazi chaos. Physical survival is followed by a series of existential trials - repatriation, refugee status in England with a struggle for 'Englishness' - especially in language, writing and scholarship - together with a season of clinical depression and prolonged maladjustment. The book concludes with general reflections on topics such as closeness to German culture and being an outsider.

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

Andrew Karpati Kennedy (1931-2016) was born in Hungary, educated in England from 1947 at Hertford Grammar School and the University of Bristol (until 1954; Ph.D. on the languages of drama 1972). He earned his living as a teacher, specialising in English as a second language, ending as a professor of British Literature at the University of Bergen, Norway. From 1975 on, Cambridge University Press published three of his works of criticism, including the well-known Six Dramatists in Search of a Language and a critical introduction to Beckett. His career was fairly international, as a visiting scholar at the Universities of Edinburgh, Washington and Princeton together with conference participation in many countries. Following retirement he devoted more time to writing short fiction: Double Vision (1999) and The Antique Dealer's Women (2006).

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Shearsman Books
• Date d'édition: 2012
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 1848611900
• ISBN 13: 9781848611900
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 208
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Allemagne