"There is an eye which sees, an ear which hears, and a book in which everything has been recorded." The Memorbuch is a book of memory, which Jewish communities kept in former times in order to keep alive the memory of those people who had had to pass a trial of some kind; it is a symbolic testimonial of their life and their suffering. And it is precisely this which Henryk Grynberg aims at in his latest book.
It tells the life of Adam Bromberg, a famous publisher and in fact the founder of modern Polish publishing, supported by his own memories as well as those of the people close to him. In Memorbuch, the fate of Bromberg's closest family members is intertwined with those of his friends' families, as well as a whole range of briefly-depicted characters, who, like Bromberg were driven out of their own country. Grynberg places the events he is describing in a profoundly historical context. By using historical sources, he tells the fates of the Jews in the towns in which the novel's plot is set.
"These descriptions place this novel in the context of the universe of Jewish history, and turn it, perversely, into an exemplification." (Dorota Krawczynska)
Henryk Grynberg (b. 1936), writer, poet, playwright and essayist, has been awarded numerous prestigious literary prizes. The author of more than twenty books, in which he makes it his task to chronicle the fate of the Polish Jews.
- Henryk Grynberg
Memorbuch
W.A.B., Warsaw 2000, edition I
© Henryk Grynberg
125 x 195, 360 pp., hardcover
ISBN 83-88221-17-5