Annihilation

Annihilation is about a day in the life of a Polish-Jewish town shortly before World War II and the Holocaust, a town that soon will be annihilated by Nazi atrocities. With grace, wit, and love for the people and place that will be destroyed, Piotr Szewc creates a hymn to the victims of the Holocaust, as well as a literary masterpiece whose brilliance is evidenced on every page.

Reading Piotr Szewc's Annihilation by Martin Riker, originally in CONTEXT #19

Details

Title Annihilation

Author Piotr Szewc

Translated by Ewa Hryniewicz-Yarbrough

Title First Published 01 October 1993

Format Hardcover

Nb of pages 112 p.

ISBN-10 1-56478034-1

ISBN-13 978-1-56478034-8

GTIN13 (EAN13) 9781564780348

Publication Date 01 October 1993

Nb of pages 112

Dimensions 5.5 x 8.5 in.

List Price $16.95

Onix Version 2.1

Format Paperback

Nb of pages 112 p.

ISBN-10 1-56478-205-0

ISBN-13 9781564782052

Publication Date 01 October 1993

Nb of pages 112

Dimensions 5.5 x 8.5 in.

List Price $10.95

Onix Version 2.1

Reviews

Press Reviews

Jewish Currents

Annihilation . . . is one of the most extraordinary, tremblingly beautiful and chilling novels I have ever read. . . . Szewc's writing resembles the sharp perceptivity of Proust and the

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Newsday

Szewc knows that life is made up not of years but of instants. So he collects them and welcomes them between two blinks, between two sighs, between two regrets. He knows, and so do we, that the city in his story . . . no longer exists.

Harvard Review

Piotr Szewc's first novel is a considerable literary achievement. . . . A deeply moving novel.

Publishers Weekly

A daring, beautifully understated experimental novel . . . In meticulously recreating an ordinary day, the omniscient voice of the narrator consecrates the everyday reality of a world he wishes to save from annihilation.

Library Journal

Your hometown is about to be annihilated. What would you save? What epitomizes this place that will soon be no more? Szewc's answer to these questions is an elegiac meditation that

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All Things Considered

Szewc's aim here is to make a story like a sharply etched grainy photograph of all the minor actions and events that make up ordinary life in an ordinary day. To see, he says, to

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World Literature Today

A finely woven web of minute details, as ephemeral as the characters' lives may prove to be in a darkly glimpsed future.

The Hollins Critic

This remarkable first novel . . . is a powerful statement, an annihilation of our pretty dreams. It is, if you will, a warning that the ravages of history can occur now and here. And isn't this message so disturbing that we will no doubt refuse to heed it?

Cleveland Free Times

In certain respects Annihilation can be compared to Our Town or Under Milkwood, but there's this difference: we know the region and its way of life are soon

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The Polish Review

Szewc is to be commended for not having succumbed to the temptation of enhancing his novel by introducing yet another account of Nazi barbarism. His book is written as if in

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