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THE TRAIN TO WARSAW

Gwen Edelman

A riveting story of the nature of desire and the cost of survival, THE TRAIN TO WARSAW is a haunting and unforgettable portrait of a man and a woman who cannot escape their past.

Jascha and Lilka flee separately from the Warsaw Ghetto in 1942. Years later they are reunited in London, where Jascha has become a celebrated writer, feted for his dark tales about his wartime adventures. One day, forty years after the war, Jascha receives a letter inviting him to give a reading in Warsaw. He tells Lilka that nothing remains of the city they knew but Lilka, nostalgic for the city of her childhood, prevails. Together, traveling by train through a frozen December landscape, they return to an unrecognizable Warsaw. When they unwittingly find themselves back in what was once the ghetto, they will discover that there are still secrets between them. Gwen Edelman's first novel, WAR STORY, was translated into eight languages, won the Prix du Premier Roman Etranger in France, and was a Koret Jewish Book Award finalist. She has organized lectures at the 92nd St Y on Holocaust subjects for The Wiener Library (the world's oldest Holocaust archives.) She lived for many years in Paris and now lives in New York City.

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Book Published 2014-04-01 by Grove Atlantic

Comments

A fine rendering of tormented souls. Read more...

Every exile dreams of the return home. Edelman’s intimate tale lets us eavesdrop on a couple’s return to Warsaw, traversing decades of conflict, betrayal, and secrecy—in war as in marriage. Love, it turns out may be the only country one ever has hopes of returning home to.

Gwen Edelman’s spare, intimate narrative belies the sweeping devastation of what’s beneath: the alternating rage and despair of survival; and a desperate love that spans a lifetime. Edelman lays bare the tragedies of 1940s Warsaw in a series of dreamlike images all the more haunting because they’re drawn from history. I could not put it down. This is a fearless, achingly important work of fiction.

France: Belfond Italy: Newton & Compton

An irresistible story told by two lovers. Ardent, fierce, shocking, and unforgettable. Gwen Edelman weaves the unthinkable into her gorgeous, tantalizing web.

THE TRAIN TO WARSAW is a stunning novel exploring the enduring wounds of the Holocaust, but it is also a deeply truthful meditation on how we can never fully know each other, even after several decades of marriage. Jascha and Lilka’s search for a Warsaw that has disappeared is utterly compelling and affecting while Gwen Edelman’s sharp, spare prose equals Cynthia Ozick at her best and most resonant.

A couple return to Poland, 40 years after the war and their escape from the Warsaw ghetto.

A tale of the Holocaust’s lingering wounds, told in polished prose of distilled intensity…. Edelman has written a well-crafted study of exile and return whose depth exceeds its length.

Gwen Edelman's writing is so deceptively simple, so quietly poetic, that the torrents of emotion catches one by surprise and sweeps one away. The dialogue is stunningly real and the characters fully alive in this tender, unflinching tale of love that survives the unresolved—the irresolvable—traumas of life.

Edelman has portrayed the horror of the Holocaust from a singular angle: its impact on love and intimacy…Edelman has written a powerful and moving novel that is both disturbing and exhilarating. Read more...

In this lyrical exploration of memory, there is more urgent sensuality and haunting desire than anything I've read in a long time. THE TRAIN TO WARSAW kept me reading late into the night—saddened, aroused, angry and grateful.