' While the average reader cannot pretend truly to understand the reality of those who suffered in concentration camps Kertesz draws us one step closer' Observer Gyuri a fourteen-year-old Hungarian Jew gets the day off school to witness his father signing over the family timber business
- his final act before being sent to a labour camp Two months later Gyuri finds himself assigned to a 'permanent workplace' This is the start of his journey to Auschwitz On his arrival Gyuri finds that he is unable to identify with other Jews & is rejected by them An outsider among his own people his estrangement makes him a preternaturally acute observer dogmatically insisting on making sense of the barbarity
- & beauty
- he witnesses