'This Darkness Will Never End' reading guide for book clubs

I've written a reading guide for This Darkness Will Never End that I've posted to my professional website and which I'm also pasting here:

Synopsis:

The short story collection, This Darkness Will Never End by Edith Bruck, portrays in colorful detail the lives of poor Hungarian Jews before, during and after World War II, with the Holocaust alternately looming ahead as a fate that can’t be avoided or as the horror that can’t be outrun. The collection, published in English by Paul Dry Books, includes a story that is considered by film scholars to have inspired Robert Benigni's Oscar-winning movie "Life Is Beautiful." Bruck, who was born in Hungary in 1931, settled in Italy after the war and has been writing in Italian for more than a half-century. She is the author of two dozen novels, short story collections, books of poetry and works of nonfiction, many of which touch on her survival of the 20^th century’s worst atrocity. Through her work, Bruck supplies an answer to a critical question: What can women writers tell us about surviving the Holocaust era?

For more information about This Darkness Will Never End, visit Paul Dry Books:

https://www.pauldrybooks.com/products/this-darkness-will-never-end

This book is perfect for individuals and book clubs interested in these topics:

*Italian Literature

*World War II Literature

*Jewish Studies, especially Holocaust Studies

*Women’s Studies, including overlooked women authors

*World and Transnational Literature

*Postwar Literature

*Short Works of Fiction

*European History

What the critics said:

 

Eleanor Foa, Jewish Book Council

“Hun­gar­i­an-born author Edith Bruck sur­vived depor­ta­tion to five con­cen­tra­tion camps, lost her fam­i­ly, and set­tled in Italy in 1954. Her award-win­ning work — includ­ing more than twen­ty books — is often com­pared to that of Anne Frank and Pri­mo Levi, and yet is hard­ly known in the Unit­ed States. This impres­sive book of short sto­ries, orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in 1962, and fresh­ly trans­lat­ed from Ital­ian by Jeanne Bon­ner, will hope­ful­ly help to change that.

“This Dark­ness Will Nev­er End does not direct­ly depict the Holo­caust. Instead, this col­lec­tion of fable-like tales plunges us into the lives of poor, rur­al, Jew­ish fam­i­lies — most­ly from the point of view of women and chil­dren — before, dur­ing, and after the war. We know their future, but they do not. This van­ished world is vivid­ly ren­dered and incred­i­bly poignant, par­tic­u­lar­ly because of what is inferred.” 

See the full review here:

https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/book/this-darkness-will-never-end

 

Mega Nola, Foreword Reviews

“Written with a sense of anguished history and oppressed vitality, This Darkness Will Never End is a compelling short story collection.”

“First published in 1962, Edith Bruck’s masterful short story collection This Darkness Will Never End bears witness to the atrocities of World War II and the lives of those affected by the Holocaust.”

See the full review here:

https://www.forewordreviews.com/reviews/this-darkness-will-never-end/

 

Yuval Jonas, Printed Matter (Centro Primo Levi)

“In The Frozen River, the collection’s first story, Erika, a young girl from a poor Jewish family, falls in love with Endre, a Christian boy from the city. Her family cannot afford to send her to school, so while Endre studies, she does chores—such as washing clothes in the frozen river. She must use a hatchet to break the ice. It is there, under the trees by the river, that the two teenagers meet in secret. One day, Endre tells her they have to stop. He does not say why, but she understands. ‘They’re fine people, just a little untrusting toward us,’ her mother tells her.

 “This is how antisemitism functions in these stories: through the eyes of children or adolescents attempting to understand the world around them. Antisemitism is never explicitly made central, but is instead a force that enters and disrupts the lives that the characters had hoped to live.

“With this collection, written at the beginning of her illustrious career, Bruck delivers an elegy—for childhood, for parents lost too soon, and for a world that once existed.”

See the full review here:

https://primolevicenter.org/printed-matter/in-the-shadow-of-the-holocaust-edith-brucks-short-stories/

 

Discussion questions

Edith Bruck frequently invokes darkness and light in these stories. How does she manage to balance these two opposing forces?

In the story, “Silvia,” a young German boy rescues a Jewish stowaway who then rescues him. How does Edith Bruck depict the young boy’s state of mind at the end of the story? What do you think happens off the page after the story ends? 

The stories in this collection take place before, during and after World War II. How does Edith Bruck depict the Holocaust in these deeply personal stories?

Most of the narrators we meet in these stories are young Jewish girls like Edith Bruck was at one time. What aspects depicted in these stories do you think were based directly on her experience?

This collection was published in Italy less than 10 years after The Diary of Anne Frank, and Italian critics compared Edith Bruck to Anne, saying she was the kind of writer Anne could have become had she survived. What common qualities do we find when we compare Anne's nonfiction diary and Edith's fictional stories? 

Translator’s bio:

Jeanne Bonner is a journalist, essayist and literary translator. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship in translation. She also won a PEN Grant for the English Translation of Italian literature for her translation of Mariateresa Di Lascia’s Passaggio in Ombra. Her translations have been published by the Kenyon Review, The Common, PEN America and Asymptote Journal. She studied Italian literature at Wesleyan University and has an MFA in Writing from Bennington College as well as an MA in Italian Literature and Cultural Studies from the University of Connecticut. She occasionally teaches writing at Wesleyan.

 

Author’s bio:

Edith Bruck is the author of two dozen novels, short story collections, books of poetry and works of nonfiction. Born in Hungary in 1931, she has been publishing works of literature in Italian since 1959, five years after permanently settling in Italy. Her novel, Lettera alla madre (English translation title: “Letter to My Mother”) won the Rapallo award in 1989. She also won the Viareggio prize for her novel, Quante stelle c’è nel cielo, which was adapted into the movie, “Anita B.” Her 1974 short story collection, Due Stanze Vuote, was a candidate for Italy’s most prestigious literary prize, the Strega. She was also a finalist for the 2021 Strega Award for her memoir Lost Bread, which was published in English in 2023 by Paul Dry Books. She has also translated Hungarian works into Italian, in particular poetry collections. Her work has been translated into French, Spanish, Dutch and German. She has long been a committed visitor to Italian schools to teach children about the horrors of the Holocaust. Bruck continues to publisher her work, and one of most recent works is a nonfiction book about her nascent friendship with Pope Francis, who visited Bruck at her home to honor her work as a witness and to ask forgiveness for the atrocities visited upon her, her family and the Jewish people. 

 

For further reading about Edith, visit:

 

“Forgotten Writers of the Shoah,” American Scholar

https://theamericanscholar.org/the-forgotten-writers-of-the-shoah/

 

To read Edith’s poetry in translation:

https://www.asymptotejournal.com/poetry/edith-bruck-versi-vissuti/

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You can also find this reading guide here:

https://www.jeannebonner.net/Readingguide.htm

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