Castles Burning: A Childs Life in War [Paperback]

Magda Denes (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 19, 1998

There are few figures in literature as riveting as the precocious nine-year-old Magda Denes who narrates this story. Her stubborn self-command and irrepressible awareness of the absurd make her in her mother's eyes "impossibly sarcastic, bigmouthed, insolent, and far too smart" for her own good. When her family goes into hiding from the fascist Arrow-Cross, she is torn from the "castle" of intimacies shared with her adored and adoring older brother and plunged into a world of incomprehensible deprivation, separation, and loss. Her rage, and her ability to feel devastating sorrow and still to insist on life, will reach every reader at the core. Recounting an odyssey through the wreckage and homelessness of postwar Europe, Castles Burning embodies a powerful personality, a stunning gift for prose and storytelling, a remarkable sense of humor, and true emotional wisdom and makes a magnificent contribution to the literature of childhood and war.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This steely account of a childhood on the run, first from the Nazis and then as a refugee in postwar Europe, serves as a fitting memorial to the author, who died in December 1996, shortly before the book was published. Magda Denes settled in America and became a psychoanalyst, which may explain her total lack of sentimentality about her youthful self. The fierce emotions of childhood--exacerbated in this case by the danger she faced as a Jew in fascist Hungary--have seldom been better portrayed. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

This extraordinarily moving Holocaust memoir adds a new dimension to the literature. Denes was five years old in 1939 when her father, a wealthy Hungarian Jewish publisher, left Hungary after his newspaper was seized by the authorities, leaving Magda, her 12-year-old brother, Ivan, and their mother to cope with wartime conditions in Budapest and, ultimately, the German takeover in March 1944. The author recounts with unsentimental candor how she and her family survived years of hiding in Hungry and, later, lived as displaced persons in Germany. Denes endured starvation, the death of her beloved brother and homelessness with a feisty refusal to give way to despair. What sustained her and what makes this recollection remarkable is Denes's ability to recall and express the enormous hostility she felt toward her mother for placing her in homes away from her family, her impatience with her aunt and grandparents, her fury at her father for his desertion and the cynicism beyond her years she used as a defense against an insane world. Photos not seen by PW. Author tour.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; 1st Touchstone ed edition (March 19, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684846888
• ISBN-13: 978-0684846880
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #327,738 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #63 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Historical > Holocaust
  • #67 in Books > History > Europe > Hungary
  • #68 in Books > History > Europe > Austria

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding!, December 18, 1999

By 

Bob Dent - See all my reviews

This review is from: Castles Burning: A Childs Life in War (Paperback)

I write from Budapest, the scene of much of Castles Burning. The reviewer who thinks the book cannot be accurae is entirely wrong. I have researched the places and dates mentioned by Magda Denes and have organised a school tour around such places. You can even find a plaque with her brother's name, Ivan Denes, in Vadasz utca. This is an outstanding book! Tragic, gripping, moving, even humorous at times, and a true picture of an awful time. I'll write more. Meanwhile email me if you, too, are a fan of Castles Burning (and even if you are not).

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Unforgettable!, October 4, 2002

By 

Joanna Mechlinski (CT, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Castles Burning: A Childs Life in War (Paperback)

Magda's story grips you from the start - full of horrifyingly vivid memories told in a straightforward fashion, it examines several years of a Hungarian child's life during and after WWII. Her relationship with her brother and cousin is so intense that your heart will ache for all three children. At the book's conclusion, although you know that Magda will be okay (obviously, if she wrote the autobiography later) but you itch to find out more about this incredibly resillient, intelligent young lady.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A superbright girl's view of the collapsing world in 1944-45, September 25, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Castles Burning: A Childs Life in War (Paperback)

Having lived through the same period under somewhat different, but equally harsh circumstances as an even younger child than Magda, I would like to endorse this book as a no non-sense, objective, factual and sober view of a child's world caving in on her during the years of the persecution of the Jews in Hungary, culminating in the final months of the terror. Magda Denes produced a book that needs to be read preferably in one session to sense the continuity of the story and the imperfections of the grownups under such great stress. A wonderful but scary work for people with sentimental hearts and minds!