THE WALL

by John Hersey ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 27, 1950

This is an extraordinary book, a book that grips the reader despite its length, its apparently fragmentary and episodic format. As one reads, the pattern of the story emerges, the pieces fall into place, the kaleidoscope resolves into an integrated unity. Here is the story of the Warsaw ghetto and the battle of a tiny segment of the Jewish residents against the might of the invader and conqueror. In fact, the story is of heroic stature; the details, as they've emerged from authentic records, diaries, interviews of survivors, are melodrama exceeding fictionized imaginings. And John Hersey has staged his telling of the story in so minutely conceived a fictional setting that it has the ring of authentic source material from start to finish. His narrator, in large part, is one Moach Levinson, a lonely man, a scholar who calls himself an archivist, one who has chosen as his role the recording of the ghetto story in human terms. With unparalleled skill Hersey has woven a tapestry of these records, so that the people emerge, fully realized, with the inevitable blacks and whites and greys of true life, with the enlargement of their virtues under stress, the enlargement too of their vices; with the bickerings and the tensions of too intimate association enforced upon them. We learn the weaknesses of their resentments. We share with them intensification of nationalism -- and the other side of the coin, as some try to escape, at any price, the cost of their racial heritage. Levinson is narrator, but gradually becomes a part of a ""family"" -- consisting of the Masurs, the Bersons, the Apts, who together- and separately - symbolise the whole of the ghetto cast. The interest lies not so much in the tenuous thread of story, though one is held by the fears as plans are laid for a final desperate stand in miniature war, members of the group are smuggled ""outside"" to collect weapons, communication is established and lost and found again, -- as in the growing sense of in-knowing the emotional life, the creative sense that makes possible the final scene. The twelve day battle is history. Hersay has given it that integrity he gave to his story of Hiroshima. The escape- the thirty six hours in the sever -- the tragedy of those who failed to escape, a tragedy that had something of dignity and exaltation- these too he has given in terms of restrained drama. Here is a book that should prove a landmark in American writing and publishing.

Pub Date: Feb. 27, 1950

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1950

Categories: FICTION