1944 Diary - Hardcover

Keilson, Hans

3.14

36 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0374535590 ISBN 13: 9780374535599

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017

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[1944 Diary] is a deeply personal account, made even more remarkable that it was written during World War II and the horrors of the Holocaust . . . A moving and fascinating read." ―Library Journal

In 2010, FSG published two novels by the German- Jewish writer Hans Keilson: Comedy in a Minor Key―written in 1944 while Keilson was in hiding in the Netherlands, first published in German in 1947, and never before in English―and The Death of the Adversary, begun in 1944 and published in 1959, also in German. With their Chekhovian sympathy for perpetrators and bystanders as well as for victims and resisters, Keilson’s novels were, as Francine Prose said on the front page of The New York Times Book Review, “masterpieces” by “a genius” on her list of “the world’s very greatest writers.” Keilson was one hundred years old, alive and well and able to enjoy his belated fame.

1944 Diary, rediscovered among Keilson’s papers shortly after his death, covers nine months he spent in hiding in Delft with members of a Dutch resistance group, having an affair with a younger Jewish woman in hiding a few blocks away and striving to make a moral and artistic life for himself as the war and the Holocaust raged around him. For readers familiar with Keilson’s novels as well as those new to his work, this diary is an incomparable spiritual X-ray of the mind and heart behind the art: a record of survival and creativity in what Keilson called “the most critical year of my life.”

Offering further insight into Keilson are the sonnets he wrote for his lover, Hanna Sanders, which appear in translation at the back of this volume.

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About the Author:

Hans Keilson is the author of Life Goes On, Comedy in a Minor Key, and The Death of the Adversary. Born in Germany in 1909, he published his first novel in 1933. During World War II he joined the Dutch resistance. Later, as a psychotherapist, he pioneered the treatment of war trauma in children. He died in 2011 at the age of 101.

Damion Searls is the author of three books and has translated thirty books from German, French, Norwegian, and Dutch. He rediscovered the work of Hans Keilson; his 2010 translation of Keilson's Comedy in a Minor Key, published to international acclaim when Keilson was 100, was a New York Times Notable Book and National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist.

Review:

Praise for 1944 Diary

"An excellent English translation . . . As much an investigation of its author's psychology as a document of its period." ―Dorian Stuber, Numero Cinq

"Here is found [Keilson's] humanity, the tender and daring vulnerability." ―Peter Lewis, Minneapolis Star-Tribune

“[1944 Diary] is a deeply personal account, made even more remarkable that it was written during World War II and the horrors of the Holocaust . . . A moving and fascinating read.” ―Library Journal

Praise for Hans Keilson

“The Death of the Adversary and Comedy in a Minor Key are masterpieces, and Hans Keilson is a genius . . . Read these books and join me in adding him to the list, which each of us must compose on our own, of the world’s very greatest writers.” ―Francine Prose, The New York Times Book Review

“What distinguishes Keilson from other writers on the Nazi era is his uncanny understanding of the persecutor
as well as the persecuted.” ―Time

“Keilson’s novels, poems, and essays explore the destructive impulse at work in the twentieth century, down to its deepest psychological and spiritual ramifications.” ―Jury citation, 2008 Die Welt Literature Prize

“[Keilson] depicts complicated human interactions . . . with a precocious mastery of nuance and full comprehension of what can’t be said.” ―Judith Shulevitz , The New York Times Book Review

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