For Every Sin

by Aharon Appelfeld, Jeffrey M. Green (Translator)

Overview

In For Every Sin, Aharon Appelfeld, recounts the moving and unforgettable story of Theo, a young Holocaust survivor struggling to come to terms with his experience. A student when he was first imprisoned, Theo is a young man who has lost his family and friends and wants nothing more than to return to his home. In a desperate attempt to escape the pain of the camps, he sets out to walk across Europe, determined to remain alone until he has regained his strength. In the nightmarish world he enters, haunted by images from his past and continually reunited with fellow survivors, he is forced to come face to face with his own demons and the human condition from which he cannot escape.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780802134462
Publisher:	Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Publication date:	04/29/1996
Series:	Appelfeld, Aharon
Pages:	176
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.00(h) x (d)

What People are Saying About This

Irving Howe

"Aharon Appelfeld is one of the best novelist alive." -- Irving Howe

Editorial Reviews

As in Appelfeld's earlier novels of alienation set during and after the Holocaust ( Badenheim 1939 ; To the Land of the Cattails ), this narrative portrays a man cruelly deprived of will and emotional clarity. Theo, plodding home across Europe after four years in the death camps, is stunned and lifeless, a condition reflected in Appelfeld's deliberately unadorned prose. Remote memories propel Theo toward Baden-bei-Wein--his mother, the chapels they once visited, the cafes and art galleries--and send him scuttling past clusters of refugees who beseech him to stop. He notices neither cold nor hunger, but, yearning for coffee and cigarettes, finally pauses when they are offered and finds himself not many miles from where he began. Like his thoughts, his feet have traveled in circles, pursued by visions he cannot escape. Eventually he understands that he must join those other refugees who ``stretch out their hands . . . to the miserable brethren scattered on the deserted roads.'' At the end of this slim narrative, Theo has tentatively rejoined the company of the survivors, who ``can't bring the dead back to life . . . but can at least say `we're together.' '' (May)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Though for survivors of the Holocaust the desire to forget must be strong, most have come to recognize the need never to forget and to conduct their lives accordingly. This conflict between desire and need is the focus of Appelfeld's latest work. Theo Braun, a young survivor of the camps, is determined to leave his experience behind, to isolate himself from his fellow refugees and return on foot to his home near Vienna. Whatever his intentions, he finds himself drawn, almost mothlike, back to the campfires, coffee, and companionship of other survivors. As he wrestles with his conflicting feelings, he slowly comes to realize that returning ``home'' is impossible and that as a survivor he is under an obligation to help his ``miserable brethren,'' to ``do as much good as possible.'' Succinct and affecting; essential for collections of serious fiction.-- David W. Henderson, Eckerd Coll. Lib., St. Petersburg, Fla.

Library Journal