About this eBook
A rediscovered masterpiece: an unblinking view of the Holocaust through a child’s eyes
Told from the perspective of a child slowly awakening to the atrocities surrounding him, Childhood is a searing story of the Holocaust that no reader will soon forget. As five-year-old Jona waits with his mother and father to emigrate from Nazi-occupied Amsterdam to Palestine, they are awakened at night, put on a train, and eventually interred in the camps at Bergen-Belsen. There, what at first seems to be a merely dreary existence soon reveals itself to be one of the worst horrors humanity has ever created. A triumph of heartrending clarity and dispassionate amazement, Childhood stands tall alongside such monuments of Holocaust literature as The Diary of Anne Frank, Elie Wiesel’s Night, and Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Told from the perspective of a child slowly awakening to the atrocities surrounding him, Childhood is a searing story of the Holocaust that no reader will soon forget. As five-year-old Jona waits with his mother and father to emigrate from Nazi-occupied Amsterdam to Palestine, they are awakened at night, put on a train, and eventually interred in the camps at Bergen-Belsen. There, what at first seems to be a merely dreary existence soon reveals itself to be one of the worst horrors humanity has ever created. A triumph of heartrending clarity and dispassionate amazement, Childhood stands tall alongside such monuments of Holocaust literature as The Diary of Anne Frank, Elie Wiesel’s Night, and Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
About the author
Jona Oberski is a Dutch nuclear and particle physicist. He was born in 1938 and lives in Amsterdam.
Jim Shepard is the author of The Book of Aron, a novel narrated by a child in a Warsaw Ghetto orphanage, as well as several other novels and collections of short stories, including Like You’d Understand, Anyway, which won The Story Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Award. He teaches at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts.
Ralph Manheim (1907–1992) was a noted translator. The PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation is named in his honor.
Jim Shepard is the author of The Book of Aron, a novel narrated by a child in a Warsaw Ghetto orphanage, as well as several other novels and collections of short stories, including Like You’d Understand, Anyway, which won The Story Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Award. He teaches at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts.
Ralph Manheim (1907–1992) was a noted translator. The PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation is named in his honor.
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