- Hardcover: 288 pages
- Publisher: Schocken (Mar 9 2010)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0805242805
- ISBN-13: 978-0805242805
- Product Dimensions: 14.4 x 2.8 x 21.7 cm
- Shipping Weight: 363 g
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #248,833 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
Review
“I love Aharon Appelfeld’s Blooms of Darkness. How can this great novelist still find fresh ways of telling the terrible story of those years? There’s nothing reflexive or familiar in here, each sentence is exquisitely judged; we read with the same astonishment and trepidation as if it was all happening now, and for the first time. It’s so sad, and yet it’s also all told through the child’s appetite for life, and with unquenched curiosity and hopefulness. We inhabit those things, taking refuge as Hugo does in the bliss of the moment—because, after all, what else is there?”
—Tessa Hadley, “The Year in Reading,” The New Yorker
“Like Anne Frank’s diary—a work to which it will draw justified comparison—Blooms of Darkness, beautifully translated by Jeffrey M. Green, records a brutal process of education. . . . It is in his rendering of the border territory that Hugo and Mariana inhabit that Appelfeld reveals his compassion, his wisdom, and his restraint. . . . Majestic and humane.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“Succeeds brilliantly as a gripping tale of Holocaust survival, but on this occasion, Appelfeld’s literary imagination achieves a great deal more, creating a lyrically rendered story of adolescent sexual awakening, confusion, and love that gestures toward the painful inevitability of loss in any life. Above all, as is often the case with Appelfeld’s most powerful works, Blooms of Darkness is an eloquent meditation on the resources of the mind, the consolations of memory, and the imagination under duress.”
—The Forward
“An unadorned and heartbreaking tale of a young boy coming of age during World War II . . . Poignant and tender without being sentimental, the novel achieves its powerful emotive effects through simplicity and understatement—a beautiful read.”
—Kirkus Reviews, starred
“A simple story that encapsulates the joy and sadness of a coming-of-age novel with the trauma of a world in the midst of destruction. The lean, spare prose does not shy away from harsh realities. . . . A powerful novel.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Aharon Appelfeld is fiction’s foremost chronicler of the Holocaust. The stories he tells, as here in Blooms of Darkness, are small, intimate, and quietly narrated and yet are transfused into searing works of art by Appelfeld’s profound understanding of loss, pain, cruelty, and grief.”
—Philip Roth
—Tessa Hadley, “The Year in Reading,” The New Yorker
“Like Anne Frank’s diary—a work to which it will draw justified comparison—Blooms of Darkness, beautifully translated by Jeffrey M. Green, records a brutal process of education. . . . It is in his rendering of the border territory that Hugo and Mariana inhabit that Appelfeld reveals his compassion, his wisdom, and his restraint. . . . Majestic and humane.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“Succeeds brilliantly as a gripping tale of Holocaust survival, but on this occasion, Appelfeld’s literary imagination achieves a great deal more, creating a lyrically rendered story of adolescent sexual awakening, confusion, and love that gestures toward the painful inevitability of loss in any life. Above all, as is often the case with Appelfeld’s most powerful works, Blooms of Darkness is an eloquent meditation on the resources of the mind, the consolations of memory, and the imagination under duress.”
—The Forward
“An unadorned and heartbreaking tale of a young boy coming of age during World War II . . . Poignant and tender without being sentimental, the novel achieves its powerful emotive effects through simplicity and understatement—a beautiful read.”
—Kirkus Reviews, starred
“A simple story that encapsulates the joy and sadness of a coming-of-age novel with the trauma of a world in the midst of destruction. The lean, spare prose does not shy away from harsh realities. . . . A powerful novel.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Aharon Appelfeld is fiction’s foremost chronicler of the Holocaust. The stories he tells, as here in Blooms of Darkness, are small, intimate, and quietly narrated and yet are transfused into searing works of art by Appelfeld’s profound understanding of loss, pain, cruelty, and grief.”
—Philip Roth
Product Description
A new novel from the award-winning, internationally acclaimed Israeli writer (“One of the greatest writers of the age”—The Guardian), a haunting, heartbreaking story of love and loss.
The ghetto in which the Jews have been confined is being liquidated by the Nazis, and eleven-year-old Hugo is brought by his mother to the local brothel, where one of the prostitutes has agreed to hide him. Mariana is a bitterly unhappy woman who hates what she has done to her life, and night after night Hugo sits in her closet and listens uncomprehendingly as she rages at the Nazi soldiers who come and go. When she’s not mired in self-loathing, Mariana is fiercely protective of the bewildered, painfully polite young boy. And Hugo becomes protective of Mariana, too, trying to make her laugh when she is depressed, soothing her physical and mental agony with cold compresses. As the memories of his family and friends grow dim, Hugo falls in love with Mariana. And as her life spirals downward, Mariana reaches out for consolation to the adoring boy who is on the cusp of manhood.
The arrival of the Russian army sends the prostitutes fleeing. But Mariana is too well known, and she is arrested as a Nazi collaborator for having slept with the Germans. As the novel moves toward its heartrending conclusion, Aharon Appelfeld once again crafts out of the depths of unfathomable tragedy a renewal of life and a deeper understanding of what it means to be human.
The ghetto in which the Jews have been confined is being liquidated by the Nazis, and eleven-year-old Hugo is brought by his mother to the local brothel, where one of the prostitutes has agreed to hide him. Mariana is a bitterly unhappy woman who hates what she has done to her life, and night after night Hugo sits in her closet and listens uncomprehendingly as she rages at the Nazi soldiers who come and go. When she’s not mired in self-loathing, Mariana is fiercely protective of the bewildered, painfully polite young boy. And Hugo becomes protective of Mariana, too, trying to make her laugh when she is depressed, soothing her physical and mental agony with cold compresses. As the memories of his family and friends grow dim, Hugo falls in love with Mariana. And as her life spirals downward, Mariana reaches out for consolation to the adoring boy who is on the cusp of manhood.
The arrival of the Russian army sends the prostitutes fleeing. But Mariana is too well known, and she is arrested as a Nazi collaborator for having slept with the Germans. As the novel moves toward its heartrending conclusion, Aharon Appelfeld once again crafts out of the depths of unfathomable tragedy a renewal of life and a deeper understanding of what it means to be human.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4.3 out of 5 stars (7 customer reviews)
23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A witness to Shoah like no other writer, Mar 31 2010
By shanarufus - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Blooms of Darkness: A Novel (Hardcover)
I began with Badenheim 1939 when it first came out and over the years I have read every one of his novels. Sometimes the Holocaust is a central character and the people are aware, or sometimes not. We, the readers, know what is coming and even where it is going, but the characters are often lost to fear, despair, wild hopes, incredulity, denial. They are history happening and at the same time, they are off to the side of history. Footnotes almost. This distancing, this gap, this chasm is what makes Appelfeld unlike all others who write fiction about the Holocaust.
Blooms of Darkness takes place within a 2-year period so mid-1943 to mid-1945 when the Russians marched westward into central Europe. Hugo is the tall-for-his-age 11-year-old son of pharmacists in Ukraine. They speak German at home but there was a Ukrainian servant girl and he picked up a lot from her--speaking Ukrainian and becoming more fluent later in the novel is considered essential if Hugo is to survive.
The deportation net has shrunk their lives; Papa was picked up for labor. Really? Was it really labor? Mama keeps them going materially and spiritually. They are not religious or observant but consider themselves Jews. A hiding place must be found for Hugo--they cannot postpone it any longer. Mama tells Hugo she has a place for herself but only for herself and not safe for Hugo. Hugo will be better off with Mama's dear friend, Mariana, who works as a whore in a brothel and who has agreed wholeheartedly to protect and care for Hugo. The customers are German military.
The bulk of the novel takes place in the brothel and inside Hugo's head. He dreams, he has visions, he remembers the past, he remembers his mother's words, and he writes to her in his diary to ease his longing.
I don't want to detail any more of the story--it should be discovered by the reader. Until the last few pages, we don't know what will become of Hugo. This is a stunning novel.
17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Destined for "Classic" Status, April 22 2010
By Steven Becker - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Blooms of Darkness: A Novel (Hardcover)
Blooms of Darkness is a profound, and genuinely profoundly moving, novel. Appelfeld's voice is quiet, as always, but his work emotionally resonates like no other writer's. In this novel he situates you squarely, day by day, in the life of Hugo, in hiding from the Nazis. Hugo's protector is Mariana, a prostitute. You will not soon forget these characters, or this novel. It aches, and leaves the reader aching, with so many powerful emotions. This isn't a good novel, it's a great novel. It seems criminal to me that Appelfeld isn't celebrated worldwide. He should already have earned the Nobel Prize for literature. He has written so many incredible novels. Start with Blooms of Darkness, and then relish the rest of his tantalizing body of work. No matter where you go next, you can't go wrong.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
You won't put this book down, May 15 2010
By Patricia Schroeder - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Blooms of Darkness: A Novel (Hardcover)
This book is an easy read and difficult to put down. Everything is from the view of a young Jewish boy who is hidden in a brothel to escape the Nazis. Beautiful, mesmerizing writing. I highly recommend it.
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