|
Coming in February,
2004 from W.W. Norton:
30th Anniversary Edition of Anya. |
 |
|
|
 |
"They are two lights, my
mother and father. Very often I dream about them."
They were well-to-do Russian Jews living in Poland, a world more like Tolstoy's
than our own, a world of piano lessons, elaborate meals, and story-teling,
a world swept away in the fire storm of the Holocaust. |
|
"But memory is a form of reality
after all," and by remembering, Anya brings this world back to life, room
by room, street by street, the life of the cities, the country dachas,
vacations and medical schools, fancy dress balls and marriages and births.
And death. From the sudden shock of the first bombing of Warsaw, the violence
unleashed by the Nazis swelled to a flood of destruction and despair. Bewildered
and numbed, the Jewish community struggled with the growing nightmare--invasion,
occupation, and chaos; ghettos, cattle cars, and finally Kaiserwald, where
"the living come to envy the dead." With cold, raw audacity, Anya runs, hides
and fights to save herself and her child. "Lucky in everything but her mind,"
Anya survives, only to find that, as time passes, the wounds grow deeper.
And now it takes an act of courage to remember just how it was. |
|
 |
|
"Anya makes experience--no, give it, as if uninvented, or as
if, turning around in your room, you see, for the first time, what has happened,
who you are, and what is there, and why. Susan Fromberg Schaeffer is one
of those consummately natural writers who seem not to make novels but life
itself."
Cynthia Ozick
"ANYA is a gripping narrative, with remarkable vivid background, that will
surely rank with the foremost works on the Holocaust."
Meyer Levin
"Anya is a myth, an epic, the creation of darkness and of laughter stopped
forever....A vision set down by a fearless, patient poet...A writer of remarkable
power."
The Washington Post
"Unforgettable."
Publishers Weekly
"Powerful...Redefines the meaning of heroism: not to perform valiant deeds,
but to emerge from a dehumanizing context with some measure of dignity and
integrity."
Boston Herald
"Schaeffer's greatest gift as a writer is her rich rendering of realistic
detail...Powerful."
The State, Columbia, South Carolina |
|
|
|
