A Life Without Destiny (Works of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Literature Winner)

Author: Kertész Imre
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-12-01
Features: This book is written by Nobel Prize-winning author Kertész Imre. It is a semi-autobiographical coming-of-age novel narrated in the first person. The author's childhood experiences are quite similar to those of the protagonist. The protagonist is a fourteen-year-old Jewish boy named Kovács Gy?rgy. He tells the story in a unique, hesitant, and winding way about his family sending his father to a labor camp in spring 1944, being arrested on his way to work two months later and sent to Auschwitz concentration camp, then transferred to Buchenwald, and later sent back to Buchenwald. Finally, in spring 1945, he returned to Hungary with a small number of survivors. In Gy?rgy's (the nickname for Gy?rgy) narration, life in the concentration camp is as monotonous and yet real as everyday life, with pain, boredom, and moments of joy and happiness. Like all the prisoners, Gy?rgy gradually adapts to the worsening conditions in the camp until his body severely deteriorates. Eventually, he gives up the fight for life. But at that moment, completely unexpectedly, the doctors and nurses in the camp hospital treat and care for him, which leaves the boy, who had lived in constant fear and suspicion, utterly bewildered. The boy survives. Upon returning home, Gy?rgy realizes that everything that happened cannot be communicated, and there is an unbridgeable gap between the victims and the outsiders. Standing at the threshold of two eras, the boy carries his past and prepares to continue his "unbearable life."