- Mass Market Paperback: 1 pages
- Publisher: Riverhead (TRD); Reprint edition (Jan 15 2002)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1573226491
- ISBN-13: 978-1573226493
- Product Dimensions: 20.3 x 13.1 x 1.9 cm
- Shipping Weight: 181 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #2,359,078 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
"During the war, we kept our Jew in a box." So begins The Man in the Box, Thomas Moran's debut novel. The Jew is Dr. Robert Weiss, an Austrian doctor on the run from the Nazis; the box is a small space built into the back of a hayloft owned by Herr Lukasser, an Austrian farmer. In the course of his two-year confinement, Dr. Weiss's only contact with the outside world is through Lukasser's son, Niki, whose life the doctor saved many years before, and Niki's blind girlfriend, Sigi. To these two teenagers he imparts the story of his life, fantastical tales conveyed in whispers through the wooden wall of his cell. Writing in spare, clean prose, Mr. Moran captures perfectly the tumultuous interior life of children on the verge of adulthood: the petty cruelties they visit on one another, their sexual stirrings and inchoate longings of adolescence. In the case of Niki, the added burden of the secret he must keep makes this passage particularly perilous--to himself, his family, and the Man in the Box.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
With gentle and unflinching emotional honesty, this first novel by New York journalist Moran concerns a 13-year-old boy who must care for a Jew-"the man in the box"-his father hides from the Nazis. In the midst of neighbors and friends in his Austrian village who may or may not know his secret, young Niki Lukasser must learn to do the extraordinary while burdened with an ordinary, conflicted heart. When Dr. Robert Weiss unexpectedly appears on the Lukasser doorstep one day in 1943, the family is faced with a request that is difficult to refuse. Weiss saved the life of Niki, their only child, several years earlier and now is pleading that the favor be returned. After Niki's father briefly weighs "whether the debt he has incurred was heavy enough for the payment that now seemed to be required," he seals Weiss into a tiny hidden room he has built in the loft of his barn. During the ensuing two years, Weiss's physical and emotional survival become the responsibility of Niki and his first love, Sigi, a blind girl. Though a tale of Holocaust survival, this is also the story of many friendships: between a worldly doctor and the bewildered children who tend to him yet look to him for guidance; between a sensitive young man and a perceptive young woman yearning to discover themselves; and among the sometimes stoic, sometimes irrational villagers, who have known each other all their lives. Although he can be pretentiously philosophical at times, Moran is a sophisticated storyteller who subtly explores the way ordinary people, even children, are capable of both good and evil, betrayal and sacrifice. BOMC and QPB alternate selection.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most helpful customer reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Ambiguous Tale of Coming of Age and Holocaust,
By
This review is from: Man In The Box (Mass Market Paperback)
Thomas Moran has made a wonderful debut as a fiction author with this compelling, chilling, moving tale of Niki Lukasser growing up in Nazi Austria with a Jew, Dr. Weiss, walled up for his own protection, in the barn. This is an unusual story but it is created and built up in ways that make it believable. No good deed or bad will go unpunished and betrayal is an always quietly lurking shadow among the people. The relationships are complicated, particulary the child and the man in the box, and the author makes ambiguous all the various choices of the characters. There is no black or white, good or evil, just people making good and bad decisions, often for very personal and odd reasons.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Is Niki A Boy or a Girl?,
By A Customer
This review is from: Man In The Box (Hardcover)
I liked this novel very much and thought the characters were believable and memorable. I think Moran captured the moral reality of everyday heroism--as well as the fact that many people who do good just do it and aren't sure why, just as those who do evil just do it. But I am very puzzled by Moran's handling of Niki and am still not sure of the sex of the protagonist although, unlike my co-reviewers,............... Perhaps Niki's vague sexual identity is meant to represent the thin line between good and eveil, Christian and Jew, who knows? I found it all a bit distracting. But I loved the book and will buy Moran's other works.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Moran better not lose his grip...,
This review is from: Man In The Box (Hardcover)
Because he is on the verge (in my opinion) of greatness. If he challenges himself more as a writer and a wordsmith and deepens his thinking, he will be under serious consideration for the Nobel. He is a humanist. And his writing is great humanist writing, but his ability (again, my humble opinion) has not yet matured. *ALL* of his books so far are worth reading.
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