Nightfather
Carl Friedman

Tell us a story, the children say. It is the 1960s; the Second World War is in the past. Yet their father begins: “When I was in the camp...” He cannot stop telling stories about the concentration camp. Any ordinary event can evoke a memory and another story. The children are his frightened witnesses, his spellbound audience. They live in the everyday world of school and friends, and also in their father's nightmare world. The enormous tragedy of the Holocaust is passed down from parent to child through the powerful bond of love that ties them.

“Friedman writes without ever compromising her compassion or extinguishing her sense of hope....a shocking and touching first novel.”
—New York Times Book Review

“A terse, haunted novel....with the tone and rhythm of a child's tale....heart-wrenching.”
—Margo Jefferson, New York Times

“Like Anne Frank's diary, [Nightfather] transcends genres, addressing adults and children alike....it retains a deep humanity in a pared-down, skeletally beautiful style....An extraordinary novel, written with passion, lucidity, and restraint...A noble addition to the literature of Holocaust survivors and their children.”
—The Forward

Carl Friedman was born in the Netherlands in 1952. She now lives in Amsterdam. Her books include The Gray Lover and The Shovel and the Loom.

Paperback / $9.95 (Can $11.50) / ISBN 978-0-89255-210-8 / 136 pages / Fiction