The House of Memory and Oblivion

In 1942, during the war, Albert Weiss loses his parents and his younger brother Elijah, whose disappearance he blames on himself because the boy had been entrusted to his care. For a while he lives with an ethnic German family who call him Hans and offer him their missing son's place, a way out of certain death; he chooses to keep his own identity and runs away. Many years later, in New York for a conference on the Second World War, he wanders the streets at night and finds the House of Remembering and Forgetting. In one room a screen shows him, as in a film, the suffering of his parents and Elijah's disappearance. In the next room he could erase his memory, or vanish like his famous relative, the escape artist Houdini, and the question is whether he will.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Length

190 pages in the original

Genres

Historical, War (assigned by AI)

Set in

United States

First published

2014 by Laguna

Author's age

74 when first published

ISBN

9788652117499 (original)

9788661452147 (Geopoetika, Serbia)

9780720619737 (Peter Owen, United Kingdom)

More

Wikidata