Publication Date: December 10, 2024
Print Length: 128 pages
Esquire – Best Books of Fall 2024
Previous Publications:
- Interviewing Matisse or the Woman who Died Standing Up (1991)
- The Woman Who Walked on Water (1996)
- Siam or the Woman Who Shot a Man (1999)
- The News from Paraguay (2004) won the National Book Award for Fiction
Women of Rome: A Life of Elsa Morante (2008) - I Married You for Happiness (2011)
- The Double Life of Lilian (2015)
- Sisters (2017)
SYNOPSIS
To recreate the story of Czeslawa Kwoka, a Catholic girl from Poland killed at Auschwitz, Tuck imagines the life the 14-year-old must have led both before and after Hitler’s army occupied her homeland during World War II.
After Tuck recovered only the basic facts of Kwoka’s life, she used her novelistic skills to imagine the dreams the 14-year-old girl would have had before Hitler’s invasion. Tuck then describes Kwoka’s experiences as an inmate at Auschwitz. While the book is written as a novel, Tuck includes ample footnotes to document the fact-based narrative she has set out to tell.
Kwoka was one of the six million Poles where were killed when Hitler set out to enable German settlers to take over Poland. Through her poignant portrayal of a single Holocaust victim, Tuck has humanized one of the many lives that were lost.
REVIEWS AND AUTHOR INFORMATION
Markovits, Bejamin, “A novel inspired by images of a young prisoner at Auschwitz.?” The New York Times, December 10, 2024. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/10/books/review/lily-tuck-rest-is-memory.html
Stuber, Dorian, “This Holocaust novel raises questions about imagining history.” The Washington Post. December 24, 2024. https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2024/12/24/rest-is-memory-lily-tuck-review/
Simon, Scott, “Lily tuck’s new novel ‘The Rest IS Memory’ was sparked by a single image.” NPR, December 14, 2024. https://www.npr.org/2024/12/14/nx-s1-5101727/lily-tucks-new-novel-the-rest-is-memory-was-sparked-by-a-single-image
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
How well has Tuck recreated the life of a 14-year-old girl in war torn Poland? Has she also provided true-to-life portraits of the Nazi Commandant Rudolf Hoss, his wife Hedwig and the child rescuer Janusz Korczak?
By adding footnotes to her novel, has Tuck enhanced the authenticity of the atrocities that occurred in Poland during the Nazi occupation when six million Poles were killed?
What prompted the Germans to recruit the photographer, Wilhelm Brasse, to photograph 40,000 Auschwitz prisoners? What other horrors from the Auschwitz concentration camp does Tuck describe?
Tuck used a poem by Louise Gluck for the title of her book (We look at the world once, in childhood/The rest is memory) How does Tuck’s book compare to other stories regarding the Holocaust? How well does her novel help to preserve the memory of those who deserve to be remembered?
