[The Holocaust series 01] • Kaddish pour l'enfant qui ne naîtra pas

The first word in this mesmerizing novel by the winner of the Nobel Prize for

Literature is “No.” It is how the novel’s narrator, a middle-aged Hungarian-

Jewish writer, answers an acquaintance who asks him if he has a child. It is

the answer he gave his wife (now ex-wife) years earlier when she told him she

wanted one. The loss, longing and regret that haunt the years between those

two “no”s give rise to one of the most eloquent meditations ever written on

the Holocaust.

As Kertesz’s narrator addresses the child he couldn’t bear to bring into the

world he ushers readers into the labyrinth of his consciousness, dramatizing

the paradoxes attendant on surviving the catastrophe of Auschwitz. **Kaddish

for the Unborn Child** is a work of staggering power, lit by flashes of

perverse wit and fueled by the energy of its wholly original voice.

Translated by Tim Wilkinson