Too Many Men

Ruth Rothwax runs her own business in New York, writing letters for clients for every occasion. Her parents lived through the Holocaust and raised her in Australia, where her widowed father Edek still lives in Melbourne. Hoping it will do them both good, she books a long trip with him to Poland: to the house of his boyhood and to the camps he was imprisoned in. Ruth sees anti-Semitism everywhere and can barely contain her rage, while Edek, cheerful and stubborn, chats in Polish with doormen and taxi drivers. They bargain to recover belongings taken from his family and join the tourist crowds at Auschwitz and Birkenau. Unknown to Edek, Ruth is also holding conversations with Rudolf Höss, long dead. Between squabbles both funny and painful, father and daughter respond to Poland in very different ways.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Genres

Family (assigned by AI)

Set in

Poland

First published

1999

Author's age

53 when first published

ISBN

9780330361392 (Pan Macmillan Australia, Australia)

9780688177553 (William Morrow, United States)

9780060084448 (Harper Perennial, United States)

More

Wikidata