Wide Awake: A Novel

by Robert Bober, Carol Volk (Translator)

Overview

Coming of age in 1960s Paris, Bernard Appelbaum exists in the hazy shadow of the Holocaust and on the electric cusp of the French New Wave. We find the narrator of Wide Awake as he wanders the city streets in search of signs of his father, who was deported by the Nazis in 1942. Bernard's chance encounter with a former acquaintance who has become filmmaker François Truffaut's assistant leads to a spot as an extra on the set of Jules and Jim—setting into motion a series of discoveries and lost memories that crack open a hidden past.

On seeing Jules and Jim, Bernard's mother is moved to divulge the secrets of her own past as a Jewish-Polish immigrant to France, which curiously mirrors that of the film's heroine. When revelations about his mother's two loves lead Bernard on a fateful journey through Paris, to Germany, and back to Poland and Auschwitz itself, he must plumb haunting depths in order to recover his own identity.

A beautiful and mysterious fictional memoir with echoes of W.G. Sebald's Austerlitz, this riveting new work by one of France's celebrated directors and writers will be a major new contribution to the literature of memory, loss, and how we grapple with the legacy of the Holocaust.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781595587015
Publisher:	New Press, The
Publication date:	01/24/2012
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Born in 1931 in Berlin, Robert Bober is a film and stage director and writer. He has directed over 120 films for television and is the author of five books, including Ellis Island (The New Press) with Georges Perec and Quoi de neuf sur la guerre?, for which he was awarded the Prix du Livre Inter. Bober lives in Paris. Carol Volk has translated over three dozen titles from the French. Her work has appeared in the New Yorker and other literary publications. She has spent the last decade in the U.S. Foreign Service and currently lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland.

Editorial Reviews

In this meditative novel set in the early ’60s, French film director Bober looks at the Holocaust’s legacy from the perspective of the generation that immediately followed. Bernard Appelbaum, 21 years old and newly entranced by his native Paris seen through the lens of filmmaker François Truffaut, lands a role as an extra in Truffaut’s latest, Jules et Jim (a story of simple coincidences shaping one’s life). Upon seeing the film, Bernard’s mother, Hannah, opens up about her own life’s coincidences, especially how her marriage to Bernard’s father, Yankel, resulted from their mutual friend Liezer’s absence one evening, giving Yankel the chance to confess his love. After Yankel died in the camps when Bernard was only two, Hannah reconnected with Liezer, whom she married and with whom she had Bernard’s half-brother, Alex. However, when Liezer dies in a plane crash, both boys are left fatherless and brimming with questions about their shared heritage. Though Bober writes lyrically of Paris and its young people struggling with the legacy of WWII, the plot meanders toward the end as Bober depicts obscure corners of the city, Bernard’s young loves, and the choices that lead him to face his family’s past. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

An exhortation to savor the small momentary joys . . . to capture fleeting moments.
—Le Monde des Livres

Ventriloquist of writing, Bober speaks in several voices, and captivates in every range.
—Télérama

Recreates an era and a Paris that has completely disappeared.
—Livres Hebdo

A story of desire told with reserve and intensity.
—La Quinzaine litérraire

Bober weaves his own memory into the collective memory.
—La Croix

From the Publisher

"Nostalgia is good because it makes things present that no longer are." Thus declares a habitué of a bar in Paris's Belleville neighborhood. Nostalgia is certainly the name of the game here. Bernard Appelbaum, the narrator of this slim work by Bober (coauthor, Ellis Island), seems in many respects like Proust, spending his time in remembrance of things past. He spends pages crossing and recrossing Paris neighborhoods, with special attention to the area toward the east around Belleville. He encounters Robert, a former acquaintance who has become a location scout for noted filmmaker François Truffaut. Thereafter, Bernard becomes somewhat obsessed with the Truffaut film Jules and Jim, and he uses that as a point of departure for further reflections on the past. The most poignant aspect of Bernard's investigations involves his parents, originally from Poland, during and after the Holocaust. VERDICT The publisher's promo has it right: Bober has penned a "fictional memoir," one that only half-heartedly seems a novel. Save this only for lovers of Paris drenched in nostalgia.—Edward Cone, New York

Library Journal