The Department of Missing Persons
By: Ruth Zylberman
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ISBN 10: 1628728035
ISBN 13: 9781628728033
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ASIN: B01MTDMQZU
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eISBN 10:
eISBN 13: 9781628728064
Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number: 2017015970
Publisher: Arcade Publishing/Skyhorse Publishing (2017)
Hstorical German/French Fiction, Holocaust survivors, Jewish Literature,
First published in France in 2015 under the title La direction de l'absent by Christian Bourgois Editeur
A startling debut novel about the burden of Holocaust memory and the implacable zest for life.
Thirty-six years after her mother was liberated from Bergen-Belsen, the unnamed narrator lives a comfortable life in Paris. Her mother sees ghosts at every turn, longing to find the family that disappeared behind the miasma of the Holocaust, but she cannot reconcile her motherβs trauma to the cheery bustle of daily life that surrounds them. The pain of memories that are not hers haunt her, weighing all too heavily until she is incapacitated by them, unable forge her own future.
As our narrator becomes further entrenched in the past, a letter is sent by the Department of Missing Persons suggesting that her grandfather is not dead, though details of his survival and current situation are unknown. Along with her mother, the narrator begins a desperate hunt, fighting through the past and present, love and loss, and her own vulnerabilities to find the truth and rid them both of their lingering ghosts.
Reviews:
"Not for the faint of heart, The Department of Missing Persons is a heart-wrenching descent into the annals of human suffering and the aftershocks of devastation left in its wake. A brutal, yet poignant literary tapestry, it is a study of incomprehensible cruelty, but also, of love, compassion, and the ties that bind."
-Nicole Dweck, bestselling author of The Debt of Tamar
"What does it mean to survive a massive world catastrophe like the Holocaust? Ruth Zylberman's moving novel shows that a violent past produces aftershocks that reach deep into the lives of the children and grandchildren of survivors, threatening to overwhelm their present. The missing persons of the title may well be the living, as well as the dead."
-Marianne Hirsch, author of The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture After the Holocaust
"A shock . . . Can one make fiction of the unspeakable, the unnarrateable? . . . What is troubling in this novel is how Ruth Zylberman describes the degree to which this past interferes with her and her narrator's love life and even affects the walks she takes with her mother in the streets of Paris."
-France Info
About the Authors:
Ruth Zylberman was born in 1971 in Paris. She is an acclaimed documentary film maker and director at ARTE, a television channel in Paris. Her filmography credentials include The Man Without Pain, 68 Year Zero, and Dissidents . She currently resides in Paris, France.
Grace McQuillan has translated the works of AndreΓ― Makine, StΓ©phane Allix, and has received a French Voices Award for her translation of Le Crieur de Nuit by Nelly Alard. Her work has also appeared in The Brooklyn Rail and PBS NewsHour. Originally from New Jersey, she now lives in Nevis.
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