2 minute read
THE GHETTO WITHIN by Santiago H. Amigorena; trans. by Frank Wynne
fiction
These titles earned the Kirkus Star:
THE GHETTO WITHIN by Santiago H. Amigorena; trans. by Frank Wynne .......................................................................... 4 AMERICAN FEVER by Dur e Aziz Amna ...........................................5 OUR WIVES UNDER THE SEA by Julia Armfield...............................7 BOULDER by Eva Baltasar; trans. by Julia Sanches............................7 HOW TO FALL OUT OF LOVE MADLY by Jana Casale.....................10 THE HOP by Diana Clarke .................................................................12 THE RABBIT HUTCH by Tess Gunty.................................................. 20 AFTERLIVES by Abdulrazak Gurnah ............................................... 20 THE HAUNTING OF HAJJI HOTAK AND OTHER STORIES by Jamil Jan Kochai............................................................................ 26 OTHER TERRORS ed. by Vince A. Liaguno and Rena Mason.......... 28 SOPHIE GO’S LONELY HEARTS CLUB by Roselle Lim....................30 PICTURES OF THE SHARK by Thomas H. McNeely........................32 CONFIDENCE by Denise Mina...........................................................32 LIFE CEREMONY by Sayaka Murata; trans. by Ginny Tapley Takemori.........................................................36 MOTH by Melody Razak .....................................................................38 INVASION OF THE SPIRIT PEOPLE by Juan Pablo Villalobos; trans. by Rosalind Harvey...................................................................41 TERRAFORM ed. by Brian Merchant and Claire L. Evans..............46 A TASTE OF GOLD AND IRON by Alexandra Rowland...................47 RUBY FEVER by Ilona Andrews .........................................................47 BARBARIAN LOVER by Ruby Dixon................................................48 THANK YOU FOR LISTENING by Julia Whelan...............................50 JUST ANOTHER LOVE SONG by Kerry Winfrey..............................51
THE GHETTO WITHIN
Amigorena, Santiago H. Trans. by Frank Wynne HarperVia (176 pp.) $26.99 | Aug. 23, 2022 978-0-06-301833-4
A Jewish man in 1940 Argentina confronts his mother’s fate when she’s confined in the Warsaw ghetto. Born in Argentina, Amigorena grew up in France, whose language he writes in and where this novel has been nominated for several prizes, including the Prix Goncourt. It is part of a series of autobiographical novels the author, also a prolific screenwriter, has been writing since the 1990s, and in a preface, he calls the present novel “the source” of the project. The last chapter clarifies the connection. The narrative follows a few years in the life of Vicente Rosenberg, who moved to Argentina from Poland in 1928, leaving behind his mother. Despite her many letters pleading for a response, he does not write to her for years, even as antisemitism rises in Europe. Then German troops invade Poland and the Nazis create the Warsaw ghetto. Shortly after the novel opens in late 1940, Vicente gets a letter in which his mother describes hardships in the ghetto and asks him to send money. He thinks of all the chances he had to get her out of Warsaw. He feels the onset of a “sense of the guilt that he would never truly erase from his heart.” The novel tracks the deepening of this guilt and its effect on Vicente and his wife and three children. In the next few years, the letters stop and news of the death camps starts to reach Vicente. His life becomes a “desolate void” in which “his wife and children scarcely existed.” He stops speaking and gambles compulsively. Amigorena charts the man’s guilt-driven psychological deterioration in careful detail, from small matters (“What difference would it make whether or not he ate more gnocchi?”) to abject misery. Even in extremes of emotion, the translation offers controlled, lucid prose.
