by Hans Keilson
First published 2017
Hans Keilson crouches in an upstairs room while Nazi forces conduct a roundup in the city below. The German Jewish psychoanalyst has spent nine months hiding with members of a Dutch resistance group, separated from his wife and young child. He fills his days reading Kafka, Rilke, and Buber, making notes that help him survive mentally. A few blocks away, a younger Jewish woman also lives in hiding. Keilson carries on a passionate love affair with her, writing dozens of sonnets that capture his torn feelings. He struggles between moral duty to his family and the pull of new love. When he encounters a pastor who admits he's grown tired of helping Jews, Keilson confronts the complex reality of survival during wartime. His diary reveals a man fighting to maintain his artistic and moral life while everything familiar crumbles around him. The entries show how he transforms daily terror into creative work, using literature and poetry as shields against despair.
Genres: holocaust, historical-fiction, 20th-century, biography-memoir
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, found-family
Setting: Netherlands, Germany
Period: 1944
256 pages · Hardcover · Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Content warnings: death, war