Sunday Sentence

Diary-of-the-Fall_06-242x390In which I participate in David Abrams’s “Sunday Sentence” project, sharing the best sentence I’ve read during the past week, “out of context and without commentary.”

My grandfather lost a brother in Auschwitz, and another brother in Auschwitz, and a third brother in Auschwitz, and his father and his mother in Auschwitz, and his girlfriend of the time in Auschwitz, and at least one cousin and one aunt in Auschwitz, and who knows how many friends in Auschwitz, how many neighbors, how many work colleagues, how many people he would have been quite close to had he not been the only one to survive and set off on a boat for Brazil and spend the rest of his life without ever mentioning any of their names.

Source: Diary of the Fall, by Michel Laub, translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa

4 thoughts on “Sunday Sentence

  1. Wow. Great sentence. And obviously a fine translation.

    1. Erika Dreifus says:

      Judy, I’d love for you to read this book and tell me what you think of it.

  2. That’s a great sentence — one of the things I loved most about DIARY was his lengthy and complex sentences. They are remarkable in their structure but also in their beauty in reading.

    1. Erika Dreifus says:

      Hi, Julia. Yes, that was noticeable. I was almost tempted to begin counting how many of the sections (chapters?) consisted of a single long sentence. I suspect that style may not appeal to all readers. But it worked for me (and, it seems, for you!).

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