BOOKS
A Brief Stop on The Road from Auschwitz (Granta UK, Other Press, US)
Also in Norwegian (Forlaget Press), Danish (Tiderne Skifter), German (Rowohlt), Italian (Ponte alle Grazie, Polish (Czarne), English (Granta and The Other Press), Dutch (Atlas), French (Seuil), Polish (Czarne), Hebrew (Yedioth Aharonoth), Finnish (Atena), Portuguese (Clube do Autor). Forthcoming in Hungarian (Park Kiadó).
Awarded the August Prize for Literature in 2012 and Prix du meilleur livre étranger in 2014
An exploration of memory; the memory of a child; the memory of a father; the memory of a place and time. The place is a small industrial town in Sweden. The time is post-war. The father has survived the ghetto of Lodz and Auschwitz and the slave camps and the death transports and is transferred to Sweden by the Red Cross in the summer of 1945. The author is the child travelling in his father’s footsteps, talking to him, walking with him, remembering and chronicling his strenuous efforts to make a new life in a new world. The author is the child conquering this world and making it his own. The father is the survivor who begins the world anew in the deepening shadows of a world that is no more. Too soon a chasm opens between the world of the child and the world of the father. The world of shadows invade the world of optimism, progress and collective oblivion. “The place where I make the world into mine, is also the place where the world turns its back on you, which is also the place where you finally turn your back on the world.”
The Financial Times, Nov 8 2014:
A towering and wondrous work about memory and experience, exquisitely crafted, beautifully written, humane, generous, devastating, yet somehow also hopeful.
The Independent, Nov 15 2014:
In conjuring up the indescribable and the unimaginable, Rosenberg’s story is utterly unforgettable.
The Sunday Times, Nov 23 2014:
Brilliantly and lethally done... A profoundly moving act of remembering, but also a searing investigation of complicity, guilt and shame... Ice-cold, and almost hypnotic in its rhythm and repetitions, it allows the terrible facts to speak for themselves. In this devastating memoir, David Rosenberg has finally found a voice to speak on his behalf.
The Jewish Chronicle, London Dec 11 2014:
This brilliant, touching and heart-wrenching story has rightly been compared to the work of Primo Levi in its treatment of the never-ending suffering of so many Holocaust survivors. It is my book of the year by some distance.
Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntags-Zeitung März 2013:
Rosenberg schreibt in eine einfache Sprache, so schnörkellos und schlicht wie skandinavisches Design. Seine Sätze sind von einer bestehenden Klarheit, durch Wiederholungen erreicht er eine gewisse Elegie, ein sehnsuchtsvoll bedauernde Grundmelodie, die das Buch zu mehr macht als „nur“ der Überlebensgeschichte seines Vaters: nämlich zu großer Literatur. Mitunter ist sein Buch auch von einer bösen Traurigkeit durchzogen, einem beißenden Witz, die sich an den Ungerechtigkeiten, die seinem Vater widerfahren sind, festbeißt und nicht lockerlässt, bis er sie dekonstruiert hat und in aller ihrer Widerwärtigkeit entblößt.
Dag og Tid, Oslo, Norway:
“Rosenberg manages to elevate the story of his father to a piece of eminent and artful prose, which can only be characterized as essay-writing at its best… The result is great literature.”
Adresseavisen, Trondheim, Norway.
“This is plainly spoken one of the most gripping books I have read and thought-provoking on many levels… This is a book you will not soon forget."
Politiken, Köpenhamn, Denmark.
"A masterpiece."
Dagens Nyheter, Stockholm, Sweden:
“ …the repetitive prose is through and through brilliant, unsentimental and suggestive, both distanced and naked. I become very moved by this darkly shimmering tale …. “A Short Stop on the Road from Auschwitz” is a wise, melancholic, beautiful and deeply personal book….”
Aftonbladet, Stockholm, Sweden:
“A masterful childhood memoir… [Rosenberg] writes with the assertive power of a novel, although this story is for real.”
Gefle Dagblad, Gävle, Sweden:
[The book] at times associates to the Kalevala epic, where the tender mother of Lemminkäinen puts her son together again, bone by bone. Storytelling on this level is pure magic--- “A Short stop on The Road from Auschwitz” is as close to a great novel you can get, without for a moment leaving reality.”
Judisk krönika (Jewish Chronicle), Stockholm, Sweden
“Back to the centre of pain, Rosenberg travels through the labyrinths of memory with restrained wrath, great tenderness and sensual nostalgia. It is not only the inserted small black-and-white photographs that brings the German-British writer W.G Sebald to mind. And as if further appraisal is needed, it can’t get any better than this.”
Svenska Dagbladet, Stockholm, Sweden:
“When Göran Rosenberg provides his father with a story it becomes a mighty and inspiring reading experience.”
Kulturnytt, Swedish Radio, Stockholm:
"A Short Stop on the Road from Auschwitz” is a book about a father and a time, sometimes written as a factual history, sometimes as a novel, always in a language that is crystal clear and gripping.”
Dalarnas Tidningar, Borlänge, Sweden.
"Göran Rosenberg must have thought about writing his parents’ story for many years. The result is simply brilliant.”
Allesandra Peluso, Italy
In “Una breve sosta nel viaggio da Auschwitz” (Ponte alle Grazie), tra pagine di rabbia e di affetto, di commozione e indignazione, Rosenberg mantiene vivo fino all’ultimo il profondo dialogo con il padre, consegnandoci una storia solo apparentemente familiare, una storia che parla al cuore e alla mente dell’umanità intera, di ogni epoca e latitudine. Per non dimenticare. Per non ripetere.
Amici dei Libri, 18.2.2013.
Una breve sosta nel viaggio da Auschwitz» è un intensa storia d'amore di un figlio per il padre, la cui drammatica lucida esposizione rappresenta un documento irrinunciabile nella «memoria» dei tragici eventi legati alla follia nazista e all'Olocausto.
Educativo, riflessivo, tristemente vero.. consigliato a tutti
SRF 2, Switzwerland, 14.4.2013
52 Besten Bücher, Soundfile
Bayerischer Rundfunk, 4.5.2013
"Vom Schmerz der Überlebenden". Göran Rosenbergs bewegendes Buch über den Vater. Gespräch mit dem Autor.
Helsingin Sanomaat, Finland, 13.12.2013
"There should be a tag above the concentration camp parts: not for weak-nerved. How could there have been something like this? […] Göran Rosenbergs short stop is a remarkable addition to the Holocaust literature. The novelists' refined language is combined with the accuracy and distance of a Historian."
Volkskrant, the Netherlands, 8.2.2014
"Rosenberg: a new Primo Levi."
de Standaard, Belgium, 24.1.2014
"A merciless but loving masterpiece. Grand literature."
Livres Hebdo, France, 24.1.2014
"Exemplaire et nécessaire."
L'ésprit de Narvik, France, 10.7.2014
"On voudrait éviter les superlatifs et l’emphase. Bannir les termes qui viennent spontanément aux lèvres : un livre majeur, un récit bouleversant. On voudrait éviter l’élan, échapper à la brusque indécence du « me voilà », au tambour battant de nos émotions. On voudrait garder le silence, et glisser simplement ce livre entre des mains amie. C’est cela : on voudrait pouvoir confier ce livre, précieux et fragile comme la vie elle-même, et son souvenir."
International agent:
Liepman AG
Literary Agency
Englischviertelstrasse 59
CH-8032 Zürich
Tel. +41 43 268 23 -92
Fax +41 43 268 23 -81
E-mail: marianne.fritsch@liepmanagency.com
Web: www.liepmanagency.com
The Lost land: a Personal History
Read the epilogue to the third Swedish edition of The Lost Land 2007. Back in the Ghetto.
Read the the epilogue to the 2nd edition.
Read the first chapter, Ascent, published in Jewish Writing in the Contemporary World, ed. Peter Stenberg, University of Nebraska Press (2005). Also in Nothing Makes You Free, writings by the descendants of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, ed. Melvin Jules Bukiet, W.W. Norton (2003)
Inofficial English translation of the chapter The Land Beneath The Rubble.
Das Verlorene Land, Suhrkamp Jüdischer Verlag 1998.
Review in NZZ 11.8.1998 (pdf-file)
L'utopie perdue, Denoêl 2000.
Det tapte landet, Aschehoug 1998, 2002
Det tabte land, Tiderne skifter, 1997, 2002
Friare kan ingen vara (Free Man's Burden: The American Idea from Revolution to Reagan – and a bit more)
This book which was first published in 1991 and republished in an updated version in 2004 has not been published in English but selected chapters have nevertheless been translated and can be read here.