{"id":4632,"date":"2013-10-30T11:53:06","date_gmt":"2013-10-30T11:53:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=4632"},"modified":"2013-11-01T11:10:19","modified_gmt":"2013-11-01T11:10:19","slug":"chasing-the-king-of-hearts-by-hanna-krall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=4632","title":{"rendered":"Chasing the King of Hearts by Hanna Krall"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/strong>Translated by Philip Boehm<\/strong><\/p>\n

Published by Peirene Press 1 September 2013<\/strong><\/p>\n

168 pp, paperback, \u00a312.00<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reviewed by Alison Burns<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

What is it to survive mass persecution?<\/p>\n

How are you to live, when so many have died?<\/p>\n

How do you stop asking, \u2018What if?\u2019, \u2018What if?\u2019<\/p>\n

In Hanna Krall\u2019s extraordinary Holocaust novel – first published in Warsaw in 2006 and now beautifully translated by Philip Boehm – Izolda Regensberg, who calls herself \u2018a specialist at surviving\u2019, is still having conversations in her head with her dead friends and family decades later.<\/p>\n

One of the most striking things about this novel (and there are many) is its voice:\u00a0 matter-of-fact and profoundly ironic, it describes horrors that most people still struggle to comprehend.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Izolda moves from the Warsaw ghetto to camps to prison cells and finally to an SS officer\u2019s abandoned apartment in Vienna, as she searches for her husband, Shayek.\u00a0 Along the way, she loses her teeth; is beaten, starved and tortured; sells her body and anything else she can lay her hands on.\u00a0 At one point in all this, she tries to remember how her husband ate ice-cream.\u00a0 Later, in a moment of optimism, she feels happy:<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 She doesn\u2019t know where the train is headed.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 She doesn\u2019t have any documents.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 She doesn\u2019t have anything but a German worker\u2019s overcoat, a Hungarian Jew\u2019s stockings and\u00a0a section of Jewish dentures with a gold tooth.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 She\u2019s riding a night train through Germanyand feels such joy that she starts to cry.<\/p>\n

The golden young man she meets on page\u00a0one is not the same when she retrieves him from Mauthausen.\u00a0 Nonetheless, they renew their married life, and create a family which in some ways replicates, although it can never replace, the ones they have lost.\u00a0 Izolda lives in the past.\u00a0 Shayek\u2019s present is very nearly demolished.<\/p>\n

Where did Hanna Krall find the resources for Izolda\u2019s clear-eyed clarity?\u00a0 We are told that she survived World War II by hiding in a cupboard.\u00a0 We are also told that this is a true story.\u00a0 We can only guess at what she and countless others went through.\u00a0 If we want to make sure that their suffering is remembered, then this novel is essential reading.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Alison Burns<\/p>\n

What is it to survive mass persecution?
\nHow are you to live, when so many have died?
\nHow do you stop asking, \u2018What if?\u2019, \u2018What if?\u2019
\nIn Hanna Krall\u2019s extraordinary Holocaust novel – first published in Warsaw in 2006 and now beautifully translated by Philip Boehm – Izolda Regensberg, who calls herself \u2018a specialist at surviving\u2019, is still having conversations in her head with her dead friends and family decades later […] in Reviews<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,19,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-fiction-and-non-fiction","category-notable-books","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4632"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4632\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4663,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4632\/revisions\/4663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}