Customer Reviews

Stalemate

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The review by Karen Breda is pretty comprehensive, I dont know how much there is to add, but this short novel really impressed me. I've read a lot of books about the Holocaust, both fiction and nonfiction, and this story, told as a simple parable, is one of the most powerful. There is the story set in the Vilna ghetto and the Biblical parallel of Abraham and Isaac. The author names the father and son Abraham and Isaac. This is a book that is not to be read literally for plot, although the author apparently survived the Vilna ghetto. Atrocities committed by the Nazis are more hinted at than described, which to me makes the story more effective. I also think the author was showing people as they should act, rather than as they may actually have acted. With each chapter he raises a moral dilemma. If you are looking for a realistic story about Vilna during the Second World War, I'd say try Anya by Susan Fromberg Schaeffer. That is not the intent of this book, but it is thought provoking, comparing life to a game of chess.