“Like Thomas Mann, Aharon Appelfeld surveys all the great quandaries of the twentieth century, only in their Jewish versions . . . His novels are not about waiting for what will happen next but about immersion in a timeless present, a bubble world that is all the more enthralling because you know it is about to pop.”
—Adam Kirsch, The New Yorker
“Surviving the horrors of the Holocaust, Appelfeld suggests with characteristic terseness, entails more than simply the fight to keep breathing . . . The partisans make it their goal not only to preserve their past, but also to secure their future by rescuing as many Jews as possible. Their struggle is a moving one.”
—Jordana Horn, The New York Times Book Review
“Appelfeld constructs his characters with a sensitive grace and humanistic depth; they are luminous concoctions, awhirl with mysteries and passions, at once sentimental and tragic . . . To the Edge of Sorrow is ultimately a work of neat, almost hermetic resonances.”
—Tablet Magazine
“To the Edge of Sorrow, in Stuart Schoffman’s lively and masterful translation, is certainly among Aharon Appelfeld’s top three novels . . . Discuss it, dear reader, among the many selves you will discover in yourself as you read this important work.”
—Hadassah
“In sharp yet affectless language, Aharon Appelfeld, one of Israel’s most honored novelists, has created a created a group of brave, loyal, generous, and intellectually disputatious Jewish partisans.”
—New York Journal of Books
“In this spirited novel set in Ukraine near the end of World War II, Appelfeld describes the daily hardships and travails of a band of Jewish resistance fighters in near-reportorial detail. A powerful tale of lives lived amid the duress and horrors of war that is unflinching in its authenticity.”
—Publishers Weekly
“To the Edge of Sorrow is immediately recognizable as Appelfeld’s, through its spare, eerily understated approach, which records atrocities from a grim remove. Unlike many of the brilliantly allusive author’s other novels, this one makes explicit reference to the Holocaust, but there’s still a dreamlike quality at work . . . The story moves toward its climax with the usual disquieting force. Another haunting and heartbreaking tale of the Holocaust from one who survived it.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred)
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