Originally published in weekly instalments, Nine Suitcases is the Hungarian writer Bela Zsolt's harrowing memoir of his experiences in the ghetto of Nagyvarad and as a forced labourer in the Ukraine. Written with exceptional freshness and a devastating blend of angry despair and cool detachment, Zsolt - one of the earliest writers on the Holocaust - provides not only a rare insight into Hungarian fascism, but a shocking exposure of the cruelty, indifference, selfishness, cowardice and betrayal of which human beings - the victims no less than the perpetrators - are capable in extreme circumstances. Interspersed with moments of grotesque farce, grim irony and occasional memories of human kindness, Zsolt's nightmarish but meticulously realistic chronicle of smaller and larger crimes against humanity is as riveting as it is horrifying.

Suppressed in Hungary until 1980, Nine Suitcases is one of the first - and greatest - memoirs of the Holocaust ever written.

About the Author

Bela Zsolt was one of Hungary's best-known writers in the early twentieth century. Born in 1895, he served in the Austro-Hungarian Army from 1914 to 1918 and in a Hungarian-Jewish forced-labour unit in 1942-1943. In 1944, after a spell in a Hungarian ghetto and a German concentration camp, he found refuge in Switzerland. In 1945 he returned to Hungary and in 1947 became an anti-communist member of parliament. He died in 1949.

Ladislaus Loeb was born in Transylvania. He is Emeritus Professor of German at the University of Sussex.

Reviews
[A] heartbreaking memoir... Unbearably immediate -- Laurence Phelan * Independent on Sunday *
A sombre yet strangely beautiful account, devoid of sentimentality...the recent publication of his work in English is long overdue -- Phil Baker * Sunday Times *
Remarkable...exceptional -- Caroline Moorehead * Times Literary Supplement *
This is by far the best book I've come across on the subject of the extermination of Hungary's Jews -- Tibor Fischer * Guardian *
Very, very rarely you read something that knocks the breath out of you... This masterpiece does -- Carole Angier * Literary Review *



Book Information
ISBN 9780712606899
Author Bela Zsolt
Format Paperback
Page Count 336
Imprint Pimlico
Publisher Vintage
Weight(grams) 2346g
Dimensions(mm) 198mm * 129mm * 21mm