A Jew Must Die

✍ Scribed by Chessex, Jacques

• Book ID: 108926357
• Publisher: Bitter Lemon Press
• Year: 2009
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 29 KB
• Category: Fiction
• ISBN-13: 9781904738572

✦ Synopsis

Chessex, a prominent Swiss writer, died in 2009 at age 75. He was the first non–French citizen to win the Prix Goncourt, France’s most prestigious literary award. American readers of this particular novel, which is one of Chessex’s many, will quickly understand why he was so honored. It is a swift and stunning narrative based on a true incident. In the Swiss town of Payenne (the author’s hometown), in 1942, a group of Swiss Nazis kill a successful Jewish cattle trader. It was nothing personal, as it were, but rather an act of intimidation aimed at the Jewish community of Switzerland at large. This spare but heart-piercing novel illustrates the dementedness of Nazism (such a thing as total depravity, pure in its filth) as it captures the European mind-set of the 1930s and 1940s as people looked for scapegoats to blame for the hard economic times, which in turn made anti-Semitism and thus Nazism appealing. The writing is elegant, in provocative contrast to the human crudity and cruelty it depicts. (The atmosphere of the town is described this way: Dark currents flow unseen beneath the assurance and business bustle. Complexions are rosy or ruddy, the soil is rich, but covert dangers lurk.) Read this novel for the history it depicts and for the sheer beauty of its prose.