TALES OF GRABOWSKI: Transformations, Escape and Other Stories

This is the first of two books by Israeli author Auerbach (1922–2002) that will arrive in the U.S. this summer, and it's a good one. The story collection, Auerbach's English-language debut, traces the life of Polish Jew David Gordon, beginning with two novellas, "Transformations" and "Escape." Faced with liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto, the 18-year-old Gordon, with the help of forged papers, becomes Wladyslaw Grabowski, a shipyard worker among the numerous non-Jewish Poles, Ukrainians and other "inferiors" used as cheap labor by the German war machine. He eventually makes contact with an Argentinian-born British spy and supplies information on the shipyard in exchange for money, tobacco, stockings and other useful black market goods. Though warned by a friend that his transformation may prove "irreversible," he suffers the presence of the "notorious, imperishable ghost" of his former self. Three shorter stories complete the volume, subtly demonstrating the lingering effects of this experience as David moves to Israel and the U.S. Told in a disarmingly plain style ("Even before he married his second wife, and long before his strokes, David's life was dominated by memories. They were bad memories: he was a survivor of the Holocaust"), the story of Gordon's life—much of which overlaps with Auerbach's own—shows that Holocaust narratives have not lost their power to illuminate humanity's darker impulses. (June 30)

FYI:Toby Press will publish Auerbach's The Owl and Other Stories in July.