Etre sans Destin

by Imre Kertesz

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Etre sans Destin

by
Imre Kertesz

book data

311 ratings, 4.15 average rating, 53 reviews (more data...)

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published

June 1999 (first published 1975) by French & European Pubns

binding

Paperback, 366 pages

isbn

0785977864 (isbn13: 9780785977865)

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other reviews (showing 1-20 of 512)

All ratings | 5 stars (129) | 4 stars (112) | 3 stars (43) | 2 stars (16) | avg 4.15

all | this edition

Leah

Leah rated it:

(review of isbn 1400078636)

12/15/07

Read in October, 2007

I could barely put this book down. The narrative voice is eerily calm and matter-of-fact while describing the horrors of a concentration camp. This style of narration is more moving than one that describes the gore and misery in exact detail, because it is so opposite of the way the Holocaust is usually spoken of.

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Naomi

Naomi rated it:

(review of isbn 1400078636)

04/22/08

Read in March, 2008

recommends it for: Autumn

This book is the ultimate example of the unreliable narrator. It is a bone-chilling examination of what happens to the psych ein an environment of ultimate deprivation and dehumanization.

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Endah

Endah rated it:

(review of isbn 0810110490)

10/26/08

aku baca edisi Indonesia terbitan Bentang Pustaka (2005)

Penulis Imre Kartesz

Alih bahasa Utti Setiawati

Penerbit BENTANG (PT Bentang Pustaka)

Tahun 2005, Cetakan pertama

Tebal 423 hal.

George Koves berusia lima belas tahun saat suatu hari bus yang dinaikinya ke tempat ia biasa kerja di sebuah kilang minyak di Csepel, dicegat polisi. Polisi-polisi tersebut merazia mereka yang mengenakan tanda bintang bersegi enam berwarna k...more

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David

David rated it:

(review of isbn 1400078636)

06/20/08

Fatelessness tells the story of 15-year-old Georg Koves, a highly assimilated Hungarian Jew, who one day finds himself on a train to Auschwitz. He is only in Auschwitz for three days before being transferred to Buchenwald, and finally to a labor camp in Zeitz. The novel narrates his experiences in all three places. While he may have been whisked off to Auschwitz, as the book jacket puts it, “without any special malice,” he encounters plenty of cruelty along the way. But what’s weird and st...more Fatelessness tells the story of 15-year-old Georg Koves, a highly assimilated Hungarian Jew, who one day finds himself on a train to Auschwitz. He is only in Auschwitz for three days before being transferred to Buchenwald, and finally to a labor camp in Zeitz. The novel narrates his experiences in all three places. While he may have been whisked off to Auschwitz, as the book jacket puts it, “without any special malice,” he encounters plenty of cruelty along the way. But what’s weird and striking about the novel is the dispassionate, almost clinical way he narrates events, and the lack of malice he seems to hold for the individuals most directly responsible for his ill-treatment (at least while he’s under confinement).

This sentence from Kertez's Nobel Prize acceptance speech is probably the master key to the novel: “I understood that hope is an instrument of evil, and the Kantian categorical imperative—ethics in general—is but the pliable handmaiden of self-preservation.”

Hope as an instrument of evil. What does Kertesz mean by this? Possibly the way the sequencing of events in time makes Auschwitz possible, makes it possible for people living through unspeakable horrors to bear them. One thing to keep in mind is that people who are living through such events are not living them in their totality. They are living them piecemeal. This is especially true of the experience of concentration camp victims. Some, it’s true, experience the totality of the horror, have “the entire knowledge crash in upon” them “at one fell swoop.” But those are the ones who are herded into the gas chambers, so for them it’s too late. Others, like Koves, ultimately come to “understand everything,” but “while one is coming to understand everything, a person does not remain idle: he is already attending to his new business living, acting, moving, carrying out each new demand at each new stage. Were it not for that sequencing in time, and were the entire knowledge to crash in upon a person on the spot, at one fell swoop, it might be that neither one’s brain or one’s heart would cope with it…” Instead, one’s desire to stay alive, combined with the orderliness and regimentation of camp life, creates and sustains the hope that one will stay alive, and the routine, the assignment of tasks, the parceling out of chores, of business to attend to (show up for roll call, go to work, line up for supper, barter for food) makes it possible to psychologically bear something that should by all rights be unbearable.

Appallingly, the social conventions that operate in normal civil society keep operating even in the concentration camp. One hesitates to imagine the worst, even though the evidence is all around you. Citizens' tendency to defer to authority figures leads to little objection in being drafted for labor service (as happens to Koves’ father), or even kidnapped, which is essentially what happens to Koves. Then there is the orderliness, the lack of real protest, as new arrivals at Auschwitz proceed through the screening process, some to be converted into prisoners, others to be converted into corpses. Georg strives to be a model prisoner, to follow the rules of the camp, and he feels conflicted when he breaks them. The more religious Jews in the camps believe that their lot is to suffer. But, more to the point, is the subtle and nuanced way Kertesz describes the means by which these things are internalized, and the way they are exploited in order to carry out the larger plan—depopulate Europe of Jews and other undesirables by either working them to death or exterminating them outright.

One certainly gets a vivid sense, in Kertesz, of people swept along by larger forces, of the way people’s very selves are shaped by the histories they are thrown into. Everyone in the novel is a cog in a machine, to some degree, but if everyone is simply playing out his or her socially/historically assigned role, how does one apportion guilt for one of the greatest crimes of the century?...less

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Amari

Amari rated it:

(review of isbn 1400078636)

09/12/07

Read in April, 2007

i don't read much that deals with or grew out of the holocaust. i think that much of the world refuses to acknowledge the fact that other atrocities have been committed since the 1940s, and i am completely against the still all-too-prevalent portrayal, in some countries, of the german people as unfeeling, wicked, and calculating. the holocaust itself arose out of such cultural stereotyping.

that said, this book is a beauty. its power lies in kertesz' factual depiction of a young boy's experie...more

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Scott

Scott rated it:

(review of isbn 0810110490)

04/01/08

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in March, 2008

I just finished this, and it was an easy read but also a chore because it was a wierd translation so I guess it was tougher than easy. Medium read. I was really suprised that it was a novel. It really bothered me that there was a need for fabrication of such a powerful story involving Auschwitz and Buchenwald. I found it hard to believe that he would be able to go from concentration camp to concentration camp as a Jew worker. I also found it hard to believe that they would keep him alive in the ...more

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Chuck

Chuck rated it:

(review of isbn 0810110490)

05/09/08

bookshelves: favorites

Read in May, 2008

A teenage boy, the narrator, goes through the concentration camp experience. Kertesz expresses his existential ideas wonderfully through this boy,who you like and care about, ivolving not only the boy's freedom but with his possible death at the hands of Hitler's regime through his murder in a gas chamber by the government or his own deterioration in a "camp."

The book examines perceptions of experience in the moment and when looking at the moment as the past. He addresses how as...more

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1 comment

Paige

Paige rated it:

(review of isbn 1400078636)

04/01/08

bookshelves: book-group

Read in March, 2008

This is one of those Holocaust books. A bit of a depressing choice for a book club, but I did vote for it, and Kertesz did win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Fatelessness is one of the more genuinely inspiring of the genre, I think. The main character has an odd sense of detachment that plays interestingly with an important facet of the book: “this is how it seemed to me.” The main character makes no attempt at objectivity and so while there may be additional facts to be known...more

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Betty

Betty rated it:

(review of isbn 0810110490)

11/09/07

bookshelves: nobel-laureates

Read in August, 2007

"Why can't you see that if there is such a thing as fate, then there is no freedom? If, on the other hand," I continued, more and more surprised at myself and more and more wound up, "if, on the other hand there is freedom, then there is no fate. That is," and I stopped to take a breath, "that is, we ourselves are our fate."

This is my favorite line in the book. George, through his young eyes that had seen so much tries to explain to his family that everyone had ...more

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Juliane

Juliane rated it:

(review of isbn 3499240432)

10/07/08

bookshelves: 1001, holocaust, hungarian, nobel-prize

Read in October, 2008

recommends it for: everyone, fans of Kafka

While reading this book you will understand why it took so many years to publish it. After being published in 1975 in Hungary the book was hushed up - with the argument that it mocks the victims of National Socialism. And also after being published in Germany it took a while to succeed.

But what makes this book so scandalous and shocking? Is it the unique and naive approach of the 15-years-old György? Or is it the description of his feelings of happiness during his sojourn in Auschwitz - i...more

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Allen Wilcox

Allen rated it:

(review of isbn 1400078636)

06/21/08

Read in June, 2008

This book is required reading.

A word about the craft: The book is carefully carried from the first word, nearly delectable in its every detail, though absolutely exempt of sentimentality, providing a novel whose emotional floodgates open only after the book is shut for the last time and set down on the table.

Imre Kertesz is so deeply strong, so truly brave a writer...

This book is among many things a testament to the capacity for clarity in the human mind and an enduring existential...more

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1 comment

Suzanne

Suzanne rated it:

(review of isbn 1400078636)

03/29/08

I read this book because it was written by a Jewish man who survived the holocaust in Budapest. I was interested in it from my own family history perspective and also because it was an award-winning book. I thought the story was excellent and it portrayed the holocaust in a different way than other books on the topic. It is more dispassionate than other stories on the Holocaust. Even as you watch this boy going through terrible experiences, he does so in such a detached, matter of fact way. And...more

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Ryan

Ryan rated it:

(review of isbn 1400078636)

11/03/08

Read in October, 2008

A must-read that I just re-read before returning us both to the library. The novel is narrated by a Hungarian youth named George who, like the author himself, was imprisoned in a concentration camp during the holocaust. George appears naive and detached, yet at the same time he eschews denial. The combination of his escapist fantasies and honest acceptance of a confounding reality develops George's sharp vision.

George rationalizes a history that would drive some people crazy. But to disrega...more

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Juan Carlos

Juan Carlos rated it:

(review of isbn 1400078636)

09/22/08

Read in December, 2003

I expected this book to be a tad boring, and just another account of a concentration camp prisoner. Boy, was I in for a treat!
First of all, the main character is a 15 year old boy. That in itself is shocking. Imagine looking at life in a concentration camp from a young boy's perspective.

Just picture this: the day the boy is being released, his major concern is if he's going to get his bowl of soup or not.

I've read Dostoevski's Memoirs from the House of the Dead, and also Solzhenitsyn's...more

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furies

furies rated it:

(review of isbn 1400078636)

05/30/07

bookshelves: classics, prize-winners, re-read, would-rec

Read in January, 2006

hungarian, and about the holocaust. taken aside the fact that what more could i ask for in picking up a book, there's a reason this one is a prize-winner. excellent translation, excellent story of desolation and despair and isolation. it's quick and short and somehow completely haunting. absolutely deserving of any praise it gets, and would recommend to anyone. it's not what you would expect of a holocaust novel, but is so subtle, it's beautiful and yeah, haunting. honestly rivals Night as one...more

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Will

Will rated it:

(review of isbn 1400078636)

10/15/08

I think Fateless is most accessible by what it doesn't do than what it does. It doesn't tell a story of German cruelty in WWII. This would be too easy. Kertesz doesn't lean the reader into "a side". He doesn't offer right and wrong. He offers the human spirit when it is overwhelmed and confused. Fateless is complex and saying what it is about is avoiding the issue. But it does show a consciousness - at times unbearably frustrating- coming of age and understanding.

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Cheryl

Cheryl rated it:

(review of isbn 1400078636)

07/10/08

Read in July, 2008

"Yes, the next time I am asked, I ought to speak about that, the happiness of the concentration camps."

A very unemotional account of the Holocaust as experienced by Hungarian-Jewish teenager, Georg, that left me cold. Georg's dismissiveness and rationalization of his life in Auschwitz, Buchenwald, and Zeitz struck me as naive, yet heroic. I've read that Fatelessness is the first in a trilogy of novels. I'm interested in how the others follow suit.

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Vida

Vida rated it:

(review of isbn 2264033819)

08/31/08

Read in August, 2008

L'auteur a su conjuguer si bien l'extrême fragilité de l'être humain, exploitée jusqu'à donner envie de mourir, et le ressurgissement de cette force insoupçonnée, de l'envie de vivre: là réside la beauté épatante du passage final du chapitre VII.

Les bourreaux ne sont pas si présents dans ce livre, c'est le noble récit de grandes souffrances,un puissant partage de douleurs, preuve de la pitoyable insuffisance de la pitié...

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Amichai

Amichai rated it:

(review of isbn 0810110490)

12/03/07

Read in October, 2007

Fairly disturbing account, more about the affect the Holocaust had on one's psyche than the grizzly events that transpired. Mad denial--perhaps, the inability to process such catastrophe--throughout by protagonist that is disturbing in itself. Perspective on the events you never see, or one that gets over-looked for more sentimental accounts. Excellent read.

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Judy

Judy rated it:

(review of isbn 1400078636)

07/11/08

Read in January, 2008

recommended to Judy by: times book review

It defies any wording to describe this book, which was translated from hungarian and won the nobel prize in 2002.

if schools were to pick one book to read for students to understand the holocaust i think
this should be the volume.

a small book that took me weeks to read, it's the only way to really appreciate this book.

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