Description: A New York Times Critics Best Nonfiction Book of 2021 Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Biography From a gifted young writer, the story of his quest to reclaim his familys apartment building in Polandand of the astonishing entanglement with Nazi treasure hunters that follows Menachem Kaisers brilliantly told story, woven from improbable events and profound revelations, is set in motion when the author takes up his Holocaust-survivor grandfathers former battle to reclaim the familys apartment building in Sosnowiec, Poland. Soon, he is on a circuitous path to encounters with the long-time residents of the building, and with a Polish lawyer known as The Killer. A surprise discoverythat his grandfathers cousin not only survived the war, but wrote a secret memoir while a slave laborer in a vast, secret Nazi tunnel complexleads to Kaiser being adopted as a virtual celebrity by a band of Silesian treasure seekers who revere the memoir as the indispensable guidebook to Nazi plunder. Propelled by rich original research, Kaiser immerses readers in profound questions that reach far beyond his personal quest. What does it mean to seize your own legacy? Can reclaimed property repair rifts among the living? Plunder is both a deeply immersive adventure story and an irreverent, daring interrogation of inheritancematerial, spiritual, familial, and emotional. EDITORIAL REVIEWS Atwisting and reverberant and consistently enthralling story. Its a weird story that gets weirder Kaiser is a reflective man on the page, with a lively mind. He dwells on the moral seesaw he finds himself on Kaiser considers the nature of conspiracy theories, in a way thats highly relevant to our era. (His thinking about reparations of various kinds is as complex and timely.) Plunderhas many stories to tell many moods and registers. It acquires moral gravity. It pays tender and respectful attention to forgotten lives. It is also alert to melancholic forms of comedy. Tonally I was reminded at times of Jonathan Safran Foers excellent first novel,Everything Is Illuminated Traveling on a private road, closer to the ground, and at a slower pace, [Kaisers] walk turns up details that are fresh, unexpected and significant. His perceptions are sharp. We partake of his curiosity.Dwight Garner,The New York Times This is weird, complicated territory by which I mean its fantastic . . . Plunder thrives as a morally complicated travelogue . . . it is original, and it finishes strong. Kaiser chases down the facts (fingers-crossed) of Abraham Kajzers story, and they devastated me. Its not spoiling things to say that Kajzer survived the absolute worst humanity had to offer only to abandon lifes greatest reward. From the distance of all these years his choice is incomprehensible. Its our duty to try to understand anyway.The New York Times Book Review Often hilarious, often poignant A light tone belies the books seriousness of purpose: to tease out thorny issues of inheritance, reparations, and what it means to honor ones dead. New Yorker [Kaisers] rabbit-hole quest leads to wild encounters with Nazi treasure hunters, a lawyer named Killer, and plenty of questions. Fascinating.People "A master storyteller embarks on a journey to learn about his grandfather and to reclaim an apartment building that was stolen during the Holocaust. The odyssey is fascinating and thought-provoking."Christian Science Monitor,The 10 Best Books of March "With smart, elegant prose, [Kaiser] manages to construct an engrossing chronicle of his foray into an elusive past. His narrative is wonderfully digressive, laced with coincidences and ambiguities, and filled with just enough revelations to keep readers contentedly turning pages."The Forward "A saga of family history and inheritance that reads like a murder mystery,Plunderbegins with Menachem Kaisers journey to reclaim a Polish apartment building but immediately becomes something far richer and stranger. Probing with unusual insight and humor into questions of memory, loss, and what we owe to the past, this impossible-to-put-down book part travelogue, part memoir, part meditation on all that history hides from us marks the debut of a major writer.Ruth Franklin,author of NBCC Award-winningShirley Jackson: A Rather HauntedLife "Exceptionally well written, this candid and suspenseful workrecaststheinjunction that one generation of survivorsdemands ofall descendants, never to forget.Plunderis amagnificent and stunning literary debut.Andr Aciman,author ofFind MeandCall Me byYour Name "Menachem Kaiser is a young writer and storyteller of stunning talent, originality, and wisdom, and his debut book is gloriously impossible to categorize by turns hilarious and profound, digressive and suspenseful, intimate and sweeping, it stands as an enviable accomplishment.Gideon Lewis-Kraus,author ofA Sense of Direction: Pilgrimage for the Restless and the Hopeful "Reparationsandtreasure-hunting: I can't think of two better metaphors formemoir-writing, and I can't think of a better recent memoir than Menachem Kaiser'sPlunder, which has heart, humor, and intelligence to spare." Joshua Cohen,author ofAttention: Dispatches from a Land of Distraction "An exemplary contribution to the recent literature on the fraught history of the Shoah."Kirkus Reviews,starred Spellbinding . . . Superbly written, this page-turner reads like a gripping adventure novel.Publishers Weekly,starred This thoughtful and thought-provoking memoir of family secrets and family lore, like Daniel MendelsohnsThe Lost, will appeal to readers of family histories.Library Journal About the Author MENACHEM KAISER holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Michigan and was a Fulbright Fellow to Lithuania.His writing has appeared in theWall Street Journal,theAtlantic, New York,and elsewhere. He lives in Brooklyn, NY. (D)
Price: 13.99 USD
Location: Mesa, Arizona
End Time: 2024-09-21T18:16:05.000Z
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Item Specifics
All returns accepted: ReturnsNotAccepted
Book Title: Plunder : a Memoir of Family Property and Nazi Treasure
Number of Pages: 288 Pages
Language: English
Publisher: HarperCollins
Topic: Holocaust, Special Interest / Adventure, Military / World War II, Europe / Eastern, Extended Family, Personal Memoirs, Property, Europe / Poland, Jewish
Publication Year: 2021
Item Height: 1 in
Illustrator: Yes
Genre: Family & Relationships, Travel, Law, Biography & Autobiography, History
Item Weight: 16.8 Oz
Item Length: 9 in
Author: Meir Menachem Kaiser
Item Width: 6 in
Format: Hardcover
