Books.org participates in affiliate programs including Bookshop.org and the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. We may earn a commission from qualifying purchases made through links on this page, at no additional cost to you.
Overview
A devastating vision of the Holocaust and the unfillable emptiness it left in the lives of those who passed through it.
A devastating vision of the Holocaust and the unfillable emptiness it left in the lives of those who passed through it.
Synopsis
Two award-winning works of fiction by one of America's finest writers, together in one collection.
In "The Shawl," a woman named Rosa Lublin watches a concentration camp guard murder her daughter. In "Rosa," that same woman appears 30 years later, "a mad woman and a scavenger" in a Miami hotel. She has no life in the present because her past will never end. In both stories, there is a shawl—a shawl that can sustain a starving child, inadvertently destroy her, or magically conjure her back to life.
Both stories were originally published in the New Yorker in the 1980s; each was included in the annual Best American Short Stories and awarded First Prize in the annual O. Henry Prize Stories collection. Each succeeds in imagining the unimaginable: the horror of the Holocaust and the unfillable emptiness of its aftermath. Fiercely immediate, complex, and unforgettable, each is a masterwork by a writer the New York Times hailed as "the most accomplished and graceful literary stylist of our time."
Publishers Weekly
``The Shawl'' is a brief story first published in The New Yorker in 1981; ``Rosa,'' its longer companion piece, appeared in that magazine three years later. They tell a story of a woman who survived the Holocaust but who has no life in the present because her existence was stolen away from her in a past that does not end. ``A book that etches itself indelibly in the reader's mind,'' concluded PW .
Editorials
Publishers Weekly -
``The Shawl'' is a brief story first published in The New Yorker in 1981; ``Rosa,'' its longer companion piece, appeared in that magazine three years later. They tell a story of a woman who survived the Holocaust but who has no life in the present because her existence was stolen away from her in a past that does not end. ``A book that etches itself indelibly in the reader's mind,'' concluded PW .Library Journal
This is actually a five-page prologue and an extended short story. Aside from that, Ozick gives us exactly what we expect: a meditation, in figurative language at times dense and shimmering, at times richly colloquial, of the consequences of the Holocaust. Accompanied by her niece and hiding her tiny daughter, Magda, Rosa stumbles toward a concentration camp, where Magda is to die, flung against an electrified fence. Years later, in America, we meet ``Rosa Lublin, a madwoman and a scavenger, who gave up her store--smashed it up herself--and moved to Miami.'' She still writes to her dead daughter, whose shawl she covets. When Rosa meets brash, voluble Simon Persky at the laundromat, she resists his arguments that ``you can't live in the past'' with some persuasive arguments of her own. Indeed, the reader is uncertain to the end whether Rosa will bend--and whether she ought to. A subtle yet morally uncompromising tale that many will regard as a small gem.-- Barbara HoffertLibrary Journal
This is actually a five-page prologue and an extended short story. Aside from that, Ozick gives us exactly what we expect: a meditation, in figurative language at times dense and shimmering, at times richly colloquial, of the consequences of the Holocaust. Accompanied by her niece and hiding her tiny daughter, Magda, Rosa stumbles toward a concentration camp, where Magda is to die, flung against an electrified fence. Years later, in America, we meet ``Rosa Lublin, a madwoman and a scavenger, who gave up her store--smashed it up herself--and moved to Miami.'' She still writes to her dead daughter, whose shawl she covets. When Rosa meets brash, voluble Simon Persky at the laundromat, she resists his arguments that ``you can't live in the past'' with some persuasive arguments of her own. Indeed, the reader is uncertain to the end whether Rosa will bend--and whether she ought to. A subtle yet morally uncompromising tale that many will regard as a small gem.-- Barbara HoffertPhiladelphia Inquirer
Brilliant miniatures, rich with passion and compassion.
—Philadelphia Inquirer
The New York Times
Cynthia Ozick is the most accomplished and graceful literary stylist of our time.
—The New York Times
BookPage
“Performed by Yelena Schmulenson, whose emotional accuracy eats into your heart.”—BookPage