The Persistence of Hope: A True Story [Hardcover]

Albert Alcalay (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 31, 2007 | ISBN-10: 0874139635 | ISBN-13: 978-0874139631

This is the personal saga of a young Yugoslavian artist who, well aware of the Nazi danger from its earliest days, was drafted into the Yugoslav army and taken prisoner of war. Released from the work camp because of his personal courage, Alcalay returned to Nazi-occupied Belgrade where German reprisals caused the execution of over one hundred Jews. Despite the dangers, he and his family began a journey of escape that led them in various directions until an Italian family saved them. He survived to flourish in postwar Rome as a prominent member of a successor generation to the great Jewish Emotionalist movement that included Soutine, Pascine, Modigliani, Zadkine, and Chagall. After immigrating to the U.S., he joined the Harvard faculty.

--This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Albert Alcalay died in 2008. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 323 pages
• Publisher: Univ of Delaware Pr (August 31, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0874139635
• ISBN-13: 978-0874139631
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,146,119 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Incredible refuge survival story of the camps in Italy !, October 7, 2007

By 

Alexandra Spingarn "Art Historian, MA" (Boston, MA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Persistence of Hope: A True Story (Hardcover)

This is a book I couldn't put down. Its a first person narrative of a young Jewish artist and his parents running from Belgrade to Southern Italy. They were first living in refuge camps, and finally hiding in the mountains in Northern Italy running from the Nazis.

I wanted to know how they survived in the camps and who allowed them to leave and who hid them once they out in the Italian hill towns. The Italian people who hid them were amazing. Its a story of the human spirit. A man who saved his parents and brought them to America.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Persistance of Hope, January 7, 2009

By 

Leon Alkalai - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Persistence of Hope: A True Story (Hardcover)

I really enjoyed this book, which is very well written and which is a fantastic testimony to the Italian people and how they treated the Jews in Italy during the Second World War under and after Mussolini.