The Tortoises (New Directions Paperbook) [Paperback]

Veza Canetti (Author), Ian Mitchell (Translator)

Book Description

Series: New Directions Paperbook | Publication Date: June 29, 2007

Spare, dark, and cinematic, The Tortoises describes life in the Nazi reign of terror.

A renowned writer and his wife live quietly in a beautiful villa outside Vienna, until the triumphant Nazis start subjecting their Jewish "hosts" to ever greater humiliations. Veza Canetti focuses on seemingly ordinary people to epitomize the horror: one flag-happy German kills a sparrow before a group of little children; another, more entrepreneurial Nazi brands tortoises with swastikas to sell as souvenirs commemorating the Anschluss.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Austria during the Nazi Anschluss is the setting for The Tortoises, by Veza Canetti (1897-1963), wife of writer Elias Canetti. Written in 1939 and published only now in English, the autobiographical novel tells the story of writer Andreas Kain and his wife, Eva, who, while waiting for visas to leave the country, are tormented by a Brown Shirt named Pilz, who is billeted in their apartment. Though the prose is stilted, the story is compelling, and the book's literary pedigree should attract attention. Trans. from the German by Ian Mitchell.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

A masterpiece that confirms her place among the twentieth century's finest writers. -- Times Literary Supplement

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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: New Directions (June 29, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811216969
• ISBN-13: 978-0811216968
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,094,362 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "The wood-carver is selling souvenirs...tortoises branded with a swastika, burned for all time into their shells.", July 30, 2007

By 

Mary Whipple (New England) - See all my reviews
(COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Tortoises (New Directions Paperbook) (Paperback)

In simple language that sometimes takes on the cadences of the psalms, the soaring intensity of opera, and the beautifully repeated phrases of canons, author Veza Canetti tells the semi-autobiographical story of an artistic Jewish couple trapped near Vienna at the time of Kristallnacht--November, 1938--a terror she and her husband also endured. The Canettis escaped from Austria just ten days after Kristallnacht, and immediately upon their arrival in England, Veza Canetti began writing this book. Using fictional characters, she fills the narrative with vibrant details from her own recent experiences, completing the "novel" in the spring of 1939, though it was never published until 2001.

The main characters, Eva and her husband Andreas Kain, a writer, have been told that they will be shot if they remain in Austria, but they have no visa for any other country, despite applications. Eva is terrified by the changes in her Austrian neighborhood, while Kain sees nothing of violence and death. Educated and intellectual, he lives in an academic cocoon, protected from political and social realities.

Focusing on day-to-day life in an ordinary neighborhood, the author emphasizes the human interactions and the major and minor tragedies which arise when the Nazis take over. By keeping the focus on the small and the immediate, the author emphasizes by contrast the monumental scope of the "cleansing," which has affected thousands of similar, ordinary communities, just as Eva and Kain, like thousands of other Jews, try to find a way out of Austria.

Throughout the novel, the tortoise acts as a symbol of the Jews' plight. When the novel opens, Kain has rescued a small tortoise from the "humiliation" of being branded with a swastika, burned for all time into its shell. Like other tortoises, this one carries its "home" with it. It can "live off nothing, off air, off leaves, needing only warmth," and though vulnerable to vultures or wild animals, it can survive because of its "inner shell." It is man who is the most sadistic towards the tortoise, cutting flesh off its living body to get tasty, fresh meat, cutting its heart out, or detaching its brain. "Even then the tortoise can still go on creeping."

The immediacy of author Canetti's own experience is obvious in small, homely details and realistic characterizations. The contrast between the dignity of the imperiled Jews and the carnality of their Nazi oppressors contributes a stark elegance to this narrative of betrayals. Particularly poignant is the inclusion, throughout the novel of Hilde, the lively seventeen-year-old daughter of a wealthy Jewish neighbor who is determined to buy an airplane which will fly Eva and Kain out of Austria, and she willingly makes enormous sacrifices toward that end. Moments of warmth and thoughtfulness make the inexorability of the conclusion particularly heart-rending. Intimate and unforgettable, the novel is both an historical record of life in Vienna in November, 1938, and an elegant tribute to people who refuse to betray their own beliefs in the face of unconscionable terror. An important historical memoir written as fiction. n Mary Whipple