1975
Fatelessness
Imre Kertész · 1929–2016 · Hungary
Originally Sorstalanság (Hungarian)
Why it matters
A fourteen-year-old narrates Auschwitz and Buchenwald finding even there a routine, a rhythm, moments of something like happiness. Kertész's Nobel-winning testimony that refuses every consolation, including our word 'unimaginable.'
At a glance
war novelautobiographical fictionbildungsroman
Difficulty 6/10medium pace262 pagesA deliberately flat, ironic adolescent voice narrating atrocity resists easy emotional reading.
Deep dive
A fourteen-year-old narrates the camps in the same flat, curious register he'd use for any unfamiliar new experience, and the novel's real target isn't the Nazis but our need to call any of it a coherent story.
