Writing the Holocaust

Styron’s canvas is a writer’s life in Brooklyn during the 1950’s, but the real moral tableau is the conflicted, turbulent world of Sophie Zawistowska’s hidden past. Her confession to Stingo of what she had to do in Auschwitz to survive is some of the saddest, most compelling reading ever. To me this is ultimately a book about judgment and shame, and how you can never know someone enough to judge them for what they do.

Another reporter’s effort to confront his concealed past, but even more harrowing. Paranoia and conspiracy meet head-on as everything John Cooper knew and counted on is found to be a lie. A venerable, aristocratic Minnesota family are the intellectual descendents of the Third Reich, set to build The Fourth one in the U.S. Like all good conspiracy novels, the stakes just keep getting wider and wider in this one….

Okay, not directly tied to the Holocaust in any way, but I can’t leave off David Benioff’s funny, tragic, compelling novel. It features two likeable young thieves who are about to be executed in war-ravaged Leningrad, searching for two eggs for the Commandant’s daughter’s wedding. One of my favorite novels ever.