Fatelessness (First U.K. Edition)

Imre Kertesz (author); Tim Wilkinson (translator)

ISBN 10: 184343251X / ISBN 13: 9781843432517

Published by Harvill Press (Random House), London, 2005

About this Item

Second printing of the first U.K. edition. A fine copy in a fine jacket. A clean copy with price (£14.99) intact on front flap. Comes with archival-quality jacket protector. Translated from the Hungarian by Wilkinson. Fiction-K.

Seller Inventory # FLAHIVE-2796

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Fatelessness (First U.K. Edition)
• Publisher: Harvill Press (Random House), London
• Publication Date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 184343251X
• ISBN 13: 9781843432517
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Fine
• Seller catalogs:
  • Hungarian Literature

About this title

Synopsis

Fourteen-year-old Gyuri is let off going to school for 'family reasons'. His father has been called up for labour service. Arriving at the family timber store Gyuri witnesses his father sign over the business to the firm's book-keeper with nonchalance and boredom. Two months laters after saying goodbye to his father he finds himself assigned to a 'permanent workplace'.

Within a fortnight Gyuri is unexpectedly pulled off the bus and detained without explanation This is the start of his journey to and subsequent imprisonment in Auschwitz. On arrival he finds he is unable to identify with other Jews, and in turn is rejected by them. An outsider among his own people, his estrangement makes him a preternaturally acute observer.

Fatelessness' power lies in its refusal to mitigate the unfathomable alienness of the Holocaust, the strangeness is compounded by Georg's dogmatic insistence on making sense of everything he witnesses.

(2004-09-22)

About the Author

Imre Kertész, who was born in 1929 and imprisoned in Auschwitz as a youth, worked as a journalist and playwright before publishing Fatelessness, his first novel, in 1975. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2002. He lives in Budapest. (2004-09-22)