Severed Wing
Against an alternate postwar history, this novel depicts exile, love, and survival. It shows how a large political divergence reshapes personal choices and the future of lovers through intimate human relationships.
Work Information
In a history that has taken another course, people in flight keep searching for love and a place to belong.
Against an alternate postwar history, this novel depicts exile, love, and survival. It shows how a large political divergence reshapes personal choices and the future of lovers through intimate human relationships. In a history that has taken another course, people in flight keep searching for love and a place to belong.
Review Summaries
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Readers value how the alternate-history premise is tied not only to political speculation but to the urgent lives of its characters. The novel carries a quiet tension.
Book Information
- Publisher
- Livingston Pr
- Published
- 2002-07-01
- Pages
- 209 pages
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 15.24 x 1.91 x 22.23 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9780942979978
- ISBN-10
- 0942979974
- Category
- 洋書/Science Fiction & Fantasy/Fantasy/Alternate History
Typically, alternate history/universe novels offer a relatively happy version of history: what if Babbage had been able to perfect his difference engine and make computers readily available in Victorian England? What if Texas had declared itself a nation under Sam Houston? This novel, too, offers such a delightful excursionmomentarily. For the novels premisethat World War I ended much sooner, thereby avoiding the harsh Versailles Treaty, which thereby avoided the rise of Nazi Germany and its Holocaustis fated to be only a temporary vision in young Janusz Spiegelmans mind. The world Janusz inhabits is one that might have been, had millions of Jews not perished, one that would have been filled with their progeny. But this world is disappearing; it is daily returning to the grim reality of the Holocaust. In grim proof, every day in Januszs life sees more of his Jewish co-workers, friends, and acquaintances disappear; more Jewish establishments disappearvanish completely. As we share Januszs harrowing, surreal experience, we are once more reminded of the vastness of the Holocaust.
Martin J. Gidron grew up in the Philadelphia area and graduated from the University of Chicago in 1991 with a B.A. in English Language and Literature. He lived in Israel for six years, returning to the United States in 1997. He is married with two children and lives in Maryland, where he works as a journalist. Gidron's poetry has appeared in Voices Israel, Jewish Currents, and Dragonfly: East-West Haiku Quarterly. A short story, The Tallis, has been published in Jewish Currents.
Reviews
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Another aspect of the Holocaust
For some time, I have been a fan of alternative history. This is the first book that I've read that has as its central premise, "What would the world be like if the Holocaust hadn't happened?" It's not a perfect book -- some of the conclusions are a little simplistic. However, as the plot progresses, it gives a sense of what else was truly lost in the Holocaust - not just the 6 million -- but all of the lives, culture, creativity that could have existed. The generations of people that were truly lost.
Related Literary Awards
- Sidewise Award Edition 8 (2002) ・novel prize