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Refusal
Refusal
Oct 30, 2024 7:24 PM

Author:Soazig Aaron,Barbara Bray

Refusal

When Klara appears in Paris, two months after the end of the war and years after her disappearance into Auschwitz, her best friend and sister-in-law, Angélika, is elated, if apprehensive. Initially, her fears seem well founded - Klara won't eat, nor will she acknowledge the daughter she has left behind. Gradually, Klara reveals with cold anger and pitiless lucidity, the full extent of what she experienced in Auschwitz as she struggles to readapt to normal life.

Not since Sophie's Choice has a novelist succeeded in conveying - with truth, dignity, power and intelligence - the inhumanity of the death camps and the scars suffered by those who survived them. Refusal is a compelling, elegant and often heart-breaking glimpse into life beyond the horror.

Reviews

A gift from heaven, a marvel of good writing, an unashamed and inventive approximation to the unbearable weight of memory. I have been waiting for some time for an account like Refusal. I did not expect this quality and had not dared hope for it... Soon only fiction - that is the paradox, the mystery of literature - will be able to not merely bring to life, but also enrich this memory

—— Jorge Semprun , Nouvel Observateur

The most remarkable, awake-all-night-to-finish read

—— Antonia Fraser , Sunday Telegraph, Books of the Year

A sordid tragedy that makes us for the thousandth time question the worth of human existence. The impression remains with the reader that it is the work of a woman who has the strength of one of the masters like Balzac or Dostoyevsky

—— New York Times, 1930

A powerful description of a man's relentless decline

—— Ian Critchley , Sunday Times

Striking first work, sensitively translated by Sandra Smith

—— Sunday Telegraph

A novel that resonates across the pages with the narrative mastery of the griot's voice

—— Wole Soyinka

A hauntingly beautiful elegy for those who killed and died in the service of a history that was not their own. Like Ha Jin's magisterial War Trash, Burma Boy wields the two greatest weapons in the novelist's arsenal - imagination and empathy - to shattering effect

—— James Schamus, producer Brokeback Mountain and The Ice Storm

Original ...often very funny. A magical book

—— Kevin MacDonald, Director: The Last King of Scotland

A riveting read, convincingly imagined and cinematically told. Bandele is a gifted storyteller

—— Linton Kwesi Johnson

A truly fantastic book. A caesarean cut through terrifying and hilarious history

—— Sven Lindqvist

It is quite outstanding, full of beauty, pain and truth... We are lucky to have this book

—— Anne Chisholm , Sunday Telegraph

The facts surrounding the discovery of this book are as remarkable as its contents are magnificent... A triumph of indomitability and a masterwork of literary accomplishment

—— Sunday Times

Deftly translated by Sandra Smith, this is possibly the most devastating indictment of French manners and morals since Madame Bovary, as hypnotic as Proust at the biscuit tin, as gruelling as Genet on the prowl. Irène Nemirovsky is, on this evidence, a novelist of the very first order, perceptive to a fault and sly in her emotional restraint

—— Evening Standard

An heroic attempt to write a novel about a nightmare in which the author is entirely embedded

—— Anita Brookner , Spectator

Read this haunting novel, then read [Nemirovsky’s] letters in this edition to feel the full force of the work

—— Fiona Wilson , The Times

While marked by poppy wearing and memorial ceremonies, the First World War is also sustained through family history, handed down from one generation to the next. No book better articulates the impact of this narrative than Stephen Faulks’ Birdsong.

—— Lucy Middleton , Reader's Digest

A truly amazing read

—— Gail Teasdale , 24housing

I’d never read such descriptive literature, and couldn’t sleep at night for thinking about what I’d just read. His [Faulks] portrayal of terror on the battlefield is so powerful

—— Anna Redman , Good Housekeeping

My all-time favourite book

—— Kate Garraway , Good Housekeeping
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