The Man Booker Prize 2011

And of course, I could not post without mentioning the brand new addition to the prestigious list of Man Booker Prize winners; the 2011 winner Julian Barnes ‘The Sense of an Ending’.  I’ve tried to avoid reading too much of the debate concerning the 2011 shortlist, especially the controversy over readability vs. literary value, to avoid any bias on my part.  Although, it is an interesting issue which I’ve discussed myself on previous posts…  All I know is that Barnes has won after being nominated three times previously and that it is a short book (although not as short as ‘Offshore’) – which, as I’ve still got rather a long way to go before I manage to achieve my aim of reading all the winners, was a welcome statistic!  Looking ahead though, it will be nice when I’ve finished the winners to be able to read the shortlist each year and make up my own mind about whether I agree with the judges or not!

Schindler’s Ark by Thomas Keneally

It’s been an age since I’ve last blogged – life’s been busy and I find there are so many sources of reading material that seem more urgent than the book sitting on my bedside table.  Plus I did start reading another book, but it was requested by another reader at the library, so I had to return it before I had finished.  The whole system of the requester getting priority over the current reader is a rather annoying quirk of library book reading, and I find myself getting annoyed at nameless strangers who ‘steal’ my book.  But anyway enough of the excuses, on to the book in hand; and if there is ever a story to put one’s life into perspective, this latest Booker is it.

I had of course seen Spielberg’s film and even played its soundtrack on my violin, in addition to having studied this period during A level history so this was one story with which I was reasonably familiar.  And yet, it still floored me.  The style of the book is interesting, Keneally somehow managed to avoid it becoming a factual biography of Schindler despite assessments of the reliability and corroboration of sources.  The storytelling is small scale and personal, focusing and investing the reader in individual experiences, contrasting starkly with the de-humanisation of the Jews during the Holocaust.  What I found most compelling was the portrayal of the Cracow Jews’ response to the unfolding developments of the policies of the Third Reich.  That despite having an overall retrospective view of the events, I felt like as I read, I was discovering about the characters’ fate along with them, in a piecemeal, haphazard way, sharing their initial cautious hope that everything would be all right in the end.  The story follows the gradual realization of the completely inconceivable reality of the concentration and, even worse the extermination camps.  And perhaps one of the most saddening things was how the Jews assumed that their persecution would follow the pattern of previous pogroms against their religion, even having a false sense of security once they were all crammed into the Cracow ghetto, but how even this injustice paled into comparison to what was to come.

A passage that particularly affected me as a doctor, was the description of the remaining medical personnel at the hospital in the ghetto trying to decide what to do with the few remaining patients who were too ill to move.  The internal deliberations on the impossible choice and responsibility of deciding whether to administer cyanide to the patients as opposed to being indiscriminately shot by the SS as they cleared the ghetto, which went against all professional teachings, let alone the human instinct of hope of survival against the odds, was especially powerful.  The book highlighted the random nature of survival at the time and the great lengths that Schindler and others went to at great personal risk to protect his workers. 

Writing this review is actually really tough, as it’s difficult to express the complex thoughts and feelings that are evoked by this extraordinary story, written so superbly by Keneally.  To tackle such subject matter, although unequivocally important is incredibly harrowing as one inevitably reflects on “How would I respond in those circumstances?” either in Schindler’s position or as one of the Jews, or even the Nazis.  This book is particularly inspirational as although it chronicles some of the worst atrocities ever to occur, it manages to highlight how an ordinary, flawed person such as Schindler can do great things in extraordinary times, by providing hope in completely hopeless circumstances, which in turn gives us cause to hope and believe in the best of people.