**SHORTLISTED FOR THE CARNEGIE AWARD**
'Powerful . . . shattering . . . a masterpiece' The Times
'Testament of love and sacrifice . . . a masterpiece' Joshua Ferris, Guardian
'Transcendent and timeless . . . masterpiece' Washington Post
Aron is a nine-year-old Polish Jew, and a troublemaker. His mother despairs of him. His father beats him. He tries to be good. But in 1939, as the walls go up around the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw, as lice and typhus rage, families starve and fight, it is Aron who finds a way - however dangerous, however treacherous - to survive. It isn't until he lands at the feet of Janusz Korczak - orphanage director and reluctant hero - that he learns of something greater than survival.
**With new exclusive endmatter, featuring a biography of Korczak and questions for book clubs**
Jim Shepard is the author of four previous collections, including Like You'd Understand, Anyway, which won The Story Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Award, and his short fiction has often been selected for Best American Short Stories and The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories. The most recent of his seven novels, The Book of Aron, won the PEN/New England Award, the Sophie Brody Medal for achievement in Jewish literature, the Harold U. Ribalow Book Prize for Jewish literature, and the Clark Fiction Prize. He lives in Williamstown, Massachusetts with his wife, the writer Karen Shepard, his three children and three beagles, and he teaches at Williams College.
Title: The Book of Aron
Author: Shepard, Jim
ISBN: 9781784290320
Binding:
Publisher: Quercus Publishing
Publication Date: 2016-01-07
Number of Pages: 288
Weight: 0.3584 kg
The Book of Aron is a novel of profound and delicate simplicity - passivity, almost - but one which calmly and indelibly delivers the bluntest of impacts. In other words, it's a knock-out (though you never saw it coming) * Jim Crace *
A remarkable novel destined to join the shelf of essential Holocaust literature. Although relentless in its portrayal of systematic evil, The Book of Aron is, nonetheless, a story of such startling candour about the complexity of heroism that it challenges each of us to greater courage . . . Let's set aside puffery about the best novel of the month or even the year; Shepard has created something transcendent and timeless in this slim masterpiece . . . Shepard dares to move his narrative down the asymptote of despair, and the moral heroism he describes on that path toward infinity, you will never forget -- Ron Charles * Washington Post *
Any number of writers have published fiction about the Holocaust, but few have succeeded in producing a work as simple and yet so moving as The Book of Aron . . . Shepard chronicles with compassion and clarity what happens as the Nazi persecution grows ever worse * Sunday Times *
The horrors are described from the child's point of view; there is no reflection, no judgement. This is what the world is like. The pared prose is affecting . . . Unlike many of the books and films featuring children in the Holocaust, The Book of Aron reeks of the real * Spectator *
By reclaiming an insignificant voice and deploying it to observe a great man, Shepard turns hell into a testament of love and sacrifice. The Book of Aron is his best novel yet, a short and moving masterpiece -- Joshua Ferris * Guardian *
It is extraordinary how Shepard, using the voice of a poorly educated boy, can conjure up such a powerful story. Despite the inevitability of the conclusion, it is utterly shattering. The Book of Aron is a masterpiece -- Antonia Senior * The Times, Book of the Month *
Shepard is one of America's very finest writers . . . By focusing on the trauma of one young boy, he personalises the descent into hell . . . He has not only created something shocking, haunting and truly special, but captures the essence of humanity and its opposite, compassion as well as cruelty. An unforgettable book -- Billy O'Callaghan * Irish Examiner *
Compelling . . . [Aron's] voice is as intent in hope and his mind as quelled by reality . . . Here is a world to quell any reader . . . Sometimes 'old people' can be more childlike than children - a grace that Shepard presents poignantly * Tablet *
The technique is a kind of under-writing - emotional bathos - the sort of annalistic approach endorsed by Berel Lang [...] when he suggested that Holocaust writing at its sincerest and most compelling takes the form of history, rather than fiction or poetry. The Book of Aron has a biblical feel: a rascal's End of Days. Its narrator is, from the outset, an unruly force of nature . . . Moving * Times Literary Supplement *
The Book of Aron is not the first Holocaust novel to stir its readers in this way, but it carries the burden of its subject with a mordant frankness at once heartbreaking, refreshing and - hardest won of all - enchanting. Jim Shepard's novel enters a crowded canon and it stands there, head and shoulders, with the best -- Toby Lichtig * Jewish Quarterly *
Jim Shepard, a writer of extraordinary historical vision, psychological acuity, and searing irony, presents a profoundly moving portrait of its young narrator Aron; explores, with awe, our instinct to adapt and survive; and through the evolving consciousness of his phenomenally commanding young narrator, exposes the catastrophic impact of war and genocide on children * Carnegie Award *
Book of the Year: A masterful depiction of life in the ghetto and the demands of heroism. The conclusion, although inevitable, is devastating * The Times *
Heartbreaking, shattering, charming and brilliant - there isn't one word that isn't the young boy's. Jim Shepard has written some of the best books I've read. The Book of Aron is his best * Roddy Doyle *
Harrowing, comic and deeply human . . . This book needs to be read * Anthony Doerr *
