The Book of Dirt
by Bram Presser
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Pub Date Sep 11 2018 | Archive Date Mar 06 2019
Text Publishing | Text Publishing Company
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Description
WINNER, 2018 NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD GOLDBERG PRIZE FOR DEBUT FICTION
"A remarkable tale of Holocaust survival, love and genealogical sleuthing."—Books + Publishing
"Lyrical, impassioned and culturally rich."—Saturday Paper
"As in Sebald's prose narratives, Presser's novel inhabits and the dynamic region between fiction and non-fiction."—Australian Book Review
"A heartfelt and original attempt to bridge the ever-growing gaps between history, memory and silence."—The Australian
This novel was written as a tribute to the author's grandparents:
All we knew was silence. My maternal grandparents never spoke of their wartime experiences. We built myths around them: he was a teacher in the camps, keeping the children busy until it was their turn to be killed; she was capable of lifting the railway sleepers used to build the tracks that brought her fellow Jews to their deaths. It was enough. We knew not to ask. When they died only a month apart, their stories went with them, entering unchallenged into the family canon.
Then came the cracks. A newspaper article purporting to be based on an interview with him. Photographs of her on the arm of a mysterious man. Emails from an octogenarian Englishman claiming to have been his pupil. A bundle of letters hidden in a shoebox at the back of her sister's musty closet. Everything we thought we knew was wrong.
Bram Presser reimagines his family's experiences from these fragments, creating a powerful novel about memory, history, and identity.
Advance Praise
‘An
impressive and captivating story of remembrance, a journey into the past for
the sake of deciphering our present.’—Dasa Drndic, author of Belladonna
‘An
immense work of love and anger, a book Bram Presser was born to write.’—Joan London, author of The Golden Age
‘A remarkable tale of Holocaust survival, love and genealogical sleuthing…A beautiful tale that will stay with the reader long after the book’s end.’—Books + Publishing
‘Lyrical, impassioned and culturally rich…a major book, and one for the times.’—Saturday Paper
‘As in Sebald’s prose narratives, Presser’s novel inhabits and the dynamic region between fiction and non-fiction.’—Australian Book Review
‘Always surprising and beautifully complex, and
both deft and sensitive in its handling of its intertwined narratives and
materials. It is an incredibly affecting book, one that lingers long after
reading—and a remarkably assured debut.’—The Age
‘A heartfelt and original attempt to bridge the ever-growing gaps between history, memory and silence…Its heart beats so earnestly, and so loud…A meditation on the ethics of storytelling, of the duties we owe to the people whose stories we tell, and to the people whose stories we don’t.’—The Australian
Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9781925240269 |
| PRICE | $15.95 (USD) |
| PAGES | 320 |
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