Kaddish For A Child Not Born

Imre Kertesz, Hydra Books, 1997

Kertesz, a Hungarian Holocaust survivor who was imprisoned in Auschwitz in his youth, won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1992. His book ‘Fateless’ was made into a recent film. This book makes very hard reading, as it consists of 95 pages of almost unbroken prose – no chapter divisions and few paragraph breaks. It is a kind of stream of consciousness in which the narrator speaks to a friend. The main themes are how the Holocaust has pervaded every aspect of his experience, memory and identity and the capriciousness of history. The narrator explains in a tortured manner how he refused his ex-wife’s request to have a child, unable to countenance bringing new life into a world in which such evil has existed and could recur. We are offered a glimpse of his ex-wife’s new family, children that could have been his. This is a sad exploration of failure, disappointment and haunted existence, filled with a sense that the smoke of the crematoria have clouded every moment of the narrator’s later life.

Kaddish For A Child Not Born

I am grateful to Moishe Adler for introducing me to this book and supplying me with a copy.