The Warsaw Anagrams by Richard Zimler

Thursday, 17 January 2013




This book is set in 1940-41 inside the Warsaw Ghetto itself. It is about the everyday frailties and courage of a varied cast of ordinary Jews. Erik, a distinguished elderly psychoanalyst, has to leave his comfortable flat and move into the Warsaw Ghetto, where the Jews were confined during the Nazi occupation of Poland. In the tiny flat of his niece, Stefa, and her nine year-old son Adam, he must not just adapt to a frozen, starving life on the edge of death, but learn to overcome his selfishness. It is the child Adam who sets the old man on this road.

The Warsaw Anagrams is a highly realist murder mystery.  One might wonder, why bother with one person's death, when slaughter is all around? "We owe uniqueness to our dead" is the imperative that Erik comes to understand. By remembering the uniqueness of each dead person, that person's humanity is maintained and the Nazis defeated in their desire to reduce the Jews to nameless ash.

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