Customer Reviews

Traces: Stories

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I am surprised that I m the first person to review this book. I am surprised that Ida Fink is not better known. She is one of the most astonishing storytellers I have ever read.
She writes of people living in the time of the Nazi takeover of Europe, and the Nazi destruction of the Jews. But she does this in a different way from anyone else I know of. She does not write about the camps or the gas- chambers, but rather about the world outside, in the time of waiting before the disaster happens, or in the time of hiding, or in the time of the round-ups or 'aktions' She comes at her stories somewhat obliquely. I cannot really describe how she uses details to suggest and underline the poignancy of the losses, the horror of the murders. She describes ordinary lives and people who suffer extraordinarily evil and disturbing fates.
I do not have the language or the thought at this moment to do her justice.
I feel she is one of the great story- writers of mankind.