Vengeance is Mine

Om boken

"One of the most electrifying and surprising endings in world literature." Erich Maria Remarque

One morning in November 1940, two men meet on New Jersey dock. One, haggard and haunted, says he's waiting for 75 refugees from Hitler's Germany. Every day he comes, and every day he leaves-alone.

Over a drink in a nearby bar, he relates the story of his imprisonment in a pre-war Nazi concentration camp. Of the SS commandant who separated out all the Jewish inmates and set about a deliberate program to kill them one by one, by torture, beatings, or suicide. Until the day when one inmate found himself faced with a decision: was vengeance, as it says in the Torah, a matter for God alone?

Written in 1943 and never before translated into English, Vengeance is Mine is the first work of fiction to predict the Nazi's final solution, their program to exterminate the Jews. Its story is short, stunning, and unforgettable: a 20th century masterpiece.

"When you read it, the world fades into darkness ... and that's how it should be." Max Brod