Overview

As a novel, The Butterfly and the Axe—its title gradually becomes heartbreakingly clear—grabs one’s attention and holds it. —Carlin Romano for Moment Magazine Spring 1944. A Jewish family is murdered in a remote Ukrainian village. Who were they? Who were the killers? Three generations later, an Israeli woman and a British man of Ukrainian origins set out to find out how their families were implicated in this crime. They also discover how this untold murder has warped their own lives. Narrated by an unnamed historian, and based on fragments of memories, testimonies, diaries, letters and confessions, this novel seeks to fill a gap in the historical record of the Holocaust by reimagining those who were murdered and erased from memory, and to shed light on the transgenerational effects of trauma. Omer Bartov was born in Israel and teaches history in the United States. His mother emigrated from Galicia to Palestine before World War II. Most of the rest of his family were murdered under unknown circumstances in the Holocaust.

Full Product Details

9789493276703

Table of Contents

Reviews

Omer Bartov is the writer W.G. Sebald imagined himself to be. -Joshua Cohen, author of the Pulitzer Prize winner The Netanyahus As compelling as it is courageous, this is a remarkable work of creative historical excavation. Bartov stares straight into the horror of his family's wartime fate, and in imagining the deaths of those he never knew, rescues them from the mass graves and furnaces of history. It is a noble undertaking, but also an urgent and important one if future generations are to appreciate the tragic human reality behind those almost incomprehensible numbers. -Bram Presser, author of The Book of Dirt, winner of the National Jewish Book Award In this moving and imaginative novel, an Israeli woman says that she has spent her life on the other side of [a] locked door. What lies beyond is her family's experience in the Holocaust, which remains a dark mystery to her, as it does for so many Jews today. As one of the world's leading historians of the Holocaust, Omer Bartov has spent a lifetime trying to illuminate that darkness, but in this book he adds the tools of the storyteller to those of the scholar. Blending fact and fiction, he creates an unforgettable portrait of a few Jewish and Ukrainian lives during World War II. As Bartov writes, when the life of our ancestors is unimaginable, we must imagine it. We cannot let them die as if they just vanished into thin air. -Adam Kirsch, author of The Blessing and the Curse: The Jewish People and Their Books in the Twentieth Century ...a novel of the Holocaust like no other. The novel takes us on a breathtaking journey into the hearts and minds of our contemporaries still deeply affected by the generational trauma of the Nazi genocide. Many voices speak in his stories, as Jews, Poles, and Ukrainians, descendants of victims and perpetrators, try to uncover the roots of memory and to make sense of history. Beautifully written and touchingly authentic, this is a book that will stay with you forever. Many novels have been written about the Holocaust. But if you want to read only one, read The Butterfly and the Axe. -Elana Gomel, author of Little Sister and Black House We do not know how it really was, and yet we know, often more than is good for us. After so many novelists have tried to write history, it is fascinating to see what happens when a historian is impelled to write a novel. -Leona Toker, author of Gulag Literature and the Literature of Nazi Camps Is it possible to summon the voices of the murdered who vanished in the Holocaust? Can fiction fuse with family memoir to fill these gaps? In his novel The Butterfly and the Axe, Omer Bartov invents the archival record that answers this longing, documenting the betrayals and recovering the last days of the dead. -Andrea Pitzer, author of One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps For those who think there are no Holocaust stories left to tell, Omer Bartov's astonishing and moving The Butterfly and the Axe proves this is not so. Combining the eye and ear of a novelist with the rigor of a historian, Bartov has fashioned something elegant and essential, restoring voice to the voiceless and honoring the lost through a vital act of imagination. Courageous, heartfelt, and true. I will not forget it. -Mark Sarvas, American Book Award winning author of Memento Park

"Omer Bartov is the writer W.G. Sebald imagined himself to be. -Joshua Cohen, author of the Pulitzer Prize winner The Netanyahus As compelling as it is courageous, this is a remarkable work of creative historical excavation. Bartov stares straight into the horror of his family's wartime fate, and in imagining the deaths of those he never knew, rescues them from the mass graves and furnaces of history. It is a noble undertaking, but also an urgent and important one if future generations are to appreciate the tragic human reality behind those almost incomprehensible numbers. -Bram Presser, author of The Book of Dirt, winner of the National Jewish Book Award In this moving and imaginative novel, an Israeli woman says that she has spent her life ""on the other side of [a] locked door."" What lies beyond is her family's experience in the Holocaust, which remains a dark mystery to her, as it does for so many Jews today. As one of the world's leading historians of the Holocaust, Omer Bartov has spent a lifetime trying to illuminate that darkness, but in this book he adds the tools of the storyteller to those of the scholar. Blending fact and fiction, he creates an unforgettable portrait of a few Jewish and Ukrainian lives during World War II. As Bartov writes, when the life of our ancestors is unimaginable, ""we must imagine it. We cannot let them die as if they just vanished into thin air."" -Adam Kirsch, author of The Blessing and the Curse: The Jewish People and Their Books in the Twentieth Century ...a novel of the Holocaust like no other. The novel takes us on a breathtaking journey into the hearts and minds of our contemporaries still deeply affected by the generational trauma of the Nazi genocide. Many voices speak in his stories, as Jews, Poles, and Ukrainians, descendants of victims and perpetrators, try to uncover the roots of memory and to make sense of history. Beautifully written and touchingly authentic, this is a book that will stay with you forever. Many novels have been written about the Holocaust. But if you want to read only one, read The Butterfly and the Axe. -Elana Gomel, author of Little Sister and Black House We do not know how it really was, and yet we know, often more than is good for us. After so many novelists have tried to write history, it is fascinating to see what happens when a historian is impelled to write a novel. -Leona Toker, author of Gulag Literature and the Literature of Nazi Camps Is it possible to summon the voices of the murdered who vanished in the Holocaust? Can fiction fuse with family memoir to fill these gaps? In his novel The Butterfly and the Axe, Omer Bartov invents the archival record that answers this longing, documenting the betrayals and recovering the last days of the dead. -Andrea Pitzer, author of One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps For those who think there are no Holocaust stories left to tell, Omer Bartov's astonishing and moving The Butterfly and the Axe proves this is not so. Combining the eye and ear of a novelist with the rigor of a historian, Bartov has fashioned something elegant and essential, restoring voice to the voiceless and honoring the lost through a vital act of imagination. Courageous, heartfelt, and true. I will not forget it. -Mark Sarvas, American Book Award winning author of Memento Park"

Author Information

"I was born in a kibbutz, studied in Israel and Britain, have done research in Germany, Austria, France, Poland, and Ukraine, and have been living and working in the United States since 1989. As a historian, my early research concerned the involvement of the German army in war crimes (The Eastern Front, 1941-1945; Hitler's Army), as well as total war and genocide (Murder in Our Midst, Mirrors of Destruction, Germany's War and the Holocaust), and antisemitic stereotypes (The ""Jew"" in Cinema). My recent publications concern Eastern Europe (Erased: Vanishing Traces of Jewish Galicia in Present-Day Ukraine, Anatomy of a Genocide: The Life and Death of a Town Called Buczacz, and Tales from the Borderlands: Making and Unmaking the Galician Past). I also published two Hebrew-language novels in the 1980s; my first English-language novel, The Butterfly and the Axe, is forthcoming in 2023."

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available