Book description
In a memoir of a Jewish man's search for his roots, the son of Holocaust survivors returns to his parents' homeland in Poland to rediscover the former glory of East European Jewry.
Why read it?
1 author picked Jewels and Ashes as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
Zable writes of the haunted consciousness of post-conflict generations, in his case, the holocaust.
He argues that great stories must have both terror and beauty, or they merely add to the darkness. It is easy to see the terror, but what of the jewels? I grappled with this question too - how do we rightly remember victims of extreme violence? When I looked to Zable, I found a work imbued with poetry and lyricism.
Jewels and Ashes is a transcendent retracing of the terrain of his parents and grandparents.
From Georgina's list on truth-seeking post WWII.
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