The Iron Tracks

by Aharon Appelfeld

Book Overview

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK

How does one live after surviving injustice? What satisfaction comes from revenge? Can the past ever be left behind?

Masterfully composed and imbued with extraordinary feeling and understanding, The Iron Tracks is a riveting tale of survival and revenge by the writer whom Irving Howe called one of the best novelists alive today.

Ever since he was released from a concentration camp forty...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0805210997
• ISBN13: 9780805210996
• Release Date: February 1999
• Publisher: Schocken Books Inc
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.0" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

From one of the world's greatest novelists

Aharon Appelfeld is one of the world's greatest living novelists, and this novel demonstrates his many virtues. Like his previous works "The Age of Wonders" and "The Immortal Bartfuss" it is short, it concentrates on Holocaust survivors, and its style is sparse, elliptical. Erwin Siegelbaum is in late middle age and has spent decades riding the trains in Austria. He makes his living by finding Jewish memorobillia in the now Judenrein countryside and buying them from gentiles who cannot recognize their value. It is a depressing business, since the Austrian countryside is drab, ugly, and ungenerous, even without the vicious anti-Semitism that Siegelbaum encounters. One converted Jew wishes that it could be wiped away like Sodom and Gommorah, and Siegelbaum at the end of the novel wishes that he could burn one town down to the ground. At the same time he is searching for vengeance against the Nazi officer who murdered his parents. The legitimacy of this quest is not questioned by Siegelbaum, but by the end it is clear that it is not a sufficient or adequate solution to Siegelbaum's miserable, loveless life. What, after all is it like to avenge one parents, not in the abstract, but one's own actual parents? As in his earlier novels, there is the inevitable sickening ambiguity. His parents, Communist organizers, were not cruel to him, and they made considerable sacrifices for their cause. But they were often naive about the Ruthenians they tried to organize, they attacked Jewish capitalists, and were of course compromised by the Stalinist nature of the party. Erwin's father shortchanged his education, because he saw a normal education as an evil bourgeois plot (a view, given the nature of authoritarian Europe in the 1930s, that is not entirely inaccurate). His mother is burdened by a world-weariness that drains life from her before her death in a camp. After the war Siegelbaum encounters his parent's former Communist comrades and in his wandering he experiences the dissolution and decay of their ideals. If he is trapped by the past, others cannot be bothered to remember it (he encounters a quarter-Jew who is surprised to find out that the Old Testament did not mention Jesus.) And so Siegelbaum rides the trains, bribing the waiter to switch the radio to the classical music station. Zionism or Orthodoxy do not bring him comfort and solace("Religious Jews frighten me"); his connection to Judaism that forced upon him by history and inertia: "My memory is a powerful machine that stores and constantly discharges lost years and faces. In the past I believed that travel would blunt my memory; I was wrong. Over the years, I must admit, it has only grown stronger. Were it not for my memory, my life would be different--better I assume." Recently however "A glass of cognac, for instance, separates me from my memory for a while. I feel relief as if after a terrible toothache." Siegelbaum's connections to women are brief: "Love for a stati

Bizarre, disturbing, compelling--a unique voice.

Bizarre, disturbing, compelling--a unique voice.Bismark once noted that "war is diplomacy by other means" but Applefeld would phrase that a bit differently, I believe. Something like "Peace is war on smaller scale", perhaps. Intrinsically, this book is about the underlying and ancient hatreds and grievances that have dogged central Europe for more than a century and were in essence not changed a whit by the war itself.Erwin Siegelbaum's parents were killed in the Holocaust, a fate he himself barely managed to avoid. Erwin's makes his living traveling throughout central Europe visiting local fairs and markets looking for unrecognized treasures of Jewish iconography, which he buy's on the cheap and resells to rich Jewish collectors at a premium. This keeps him constantly on the road pursuing his real occupation-looking for the man who he believes is responsible for his parent's deaths so as to extract revenge.The book is full of irony-Erwin exploits his religion and his fellow Jews for his living to pursue an avocation not altogether consistent with his religion's message of tolerance and forgiveness. He is constantly mistaken for a non-Jew and subjected to rabid anti-Semitic rants of his other passengers whom he also tries to exploit to fine his nemesis. And so on.Applefeld is an Israeli citizen who writes in Hebrew. Even translated, the pace and mannerisms of the translation yield a sense of authenticity and Old World feel to the text. His prose is concise and spare-yet emotional and evocative at the same time. It all adds up to a very unique and original writing voice.This is not a happy book-it is stressful, haunting and depressing. It is also insightful and compelling reading. You will finish exhausted and emotionally drained. If that's your cup of tea, then this is your novel.

Authentic

I have read three books about the Holocaust in the last several days, 2 that are exceptional, and one that was exploitative trash. The interesting aspect is that the two works that were so emotionally effective, works that left this reader feeling the weight and oppressive horror that is genocide were both novels. They were novels by an extraordinary writer and a survivor of the camps, Mr. Aharon Appelfeld. I do not know the numbers, but I would venture to guess that the non-fiction book which is commented on somewhere on my personal page, will outsell this work 100 to one, or maybe even a higher ratio. The non-fiction work is either the appendage to a lawsuit, or the bacillus that spawned it, either way its type of history is cheap opportunism. The fact the book is full of histrionics, incompetent business documentation, and shrill sound bytes, ensures it will sell. The issue it covers is valid; it's the Author's methods I take issue with."The Iron Tracks", is a terribly disturbing look at one man's life to avenge the death of his parents. It is a journey he set out on alone, and one he sees through to its conclusion, again on his own. Like his main character that also survived the camps the Author writes this book because serious subjects, horrifying subjects need to be documented repeatedly. And for those who ask how many books are enough, the answer is there will never be enough, enough of this type. As to the other I refer to the answer is in its specific case, one is too many. Releasing a book within 24 hours of a lawsuit against the company the book is about is the vilest sort of marketing there is, for remember this is about the murder of millions. This is not a topic that requires marketing, Madison Avenue manipulation, and greed to drive it. The horror of Genocide is absolute the evil is absolute. To speak or write of it brings the full weight to bear no enhancements are needed.Erwin rides the same trains endlessly for decades in search of the man and his demise that he believes will end his decades of suffering and wandering. He constantly meets with other veterans of the war who believe that the Genocide was not only correct and justified, but also actually accomplished. He traces his self described oval with his annual stops, and how the oval is chipped away at as his sharing he is a Jew is freely confided with those who have welcomed him for decades, but now turn their backs without hesitation. In his decades long hunt he also retrieves the lost objects of Judaism, be they rare illuminated Haggadah, a mezuza, or a kiddush cup.This is only the second work I have read by Mr. Appelfeld, but based on this and, "Katerina"; I intend to continue through his published works. The subject matter he has spent his career as a writer sharing with the world's readers is the type that appropriately leaves a reader emotionally exhausted, bearing a sense of futility, and trying to summon the question why, once again.Read both Authors' work and decid

Compelling

The translator did a remarkable job in capturing the mood of this novel. The reader is drawn into the sad, hazy and alienated world of Jewish Holocaust survivors in Europe after WWII - a world of memories, death and the insurmountable venom of anti-Semitism.

Brilliant!!

I've found that lately I've been reading many books in translation, something I've rarely done outside of school. But I've discovered that when I read something really well written in translation, the book is doubly good--not only does the author deserve credit, but the translator does as well. I've also never read an Israeli novel, or at least not one originally written in Hebrew. Perhaps because Hebrew is such a phlegmy and un-poetic (at least in my experience) language and I never thought it would translate well. I was wrong. Given the right translator it all works out ok. From what I've read, Appelfeld was a child during the Holocaust where he saw his mother killed. Following the war he emigrated to what was then Palestine. Since then he's written quite a few novels about the Holocaust, most--or perhaps all--written in Hebrew. The "Iron Tracks" is the first-person story of a man who has traveled Austria by train for the last forty years, beginning shortly after the end of the war. He makes his living buying Jewish antiques cheap in one town and then selling them for profit to collectors on his circuit. He lives alone, staying at various inns, and keeps his travels to a yearly schedule. His parents were Jewish communists, both of whom were killed by a Nazi soldier. Every so often our narrator will stay with friends he met in the camps, all the while planning to murder the man who killed his parents. It's a small novel--very quiet and subdued. The language is quite spare, the dialogue even more so. But it all works and makes sense in a very disturbing and profound way. The image of one man traveling in circles, picking up the remnants of a culture destroyed is haunting. And in the end Appelfeld makes his most profound statement: ...nothing changes. This is an amazing novel--brilliant in its style and execution, equally brilliant in its purpose.