Götz and Meyer

by David Albahari | Literature & Fiction |
ISBN: 0099461730 Global Overview for this book
Registered by zzz of Rakovica / Раковица, City of Belgrade Serbia on 12/30/2007
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4 journalers for this copy...
Journal Entry 1 by zzz from Rakovica / Раковица, City of Belgrade Serbia on Sunday, December 30, 2007
This book is part of my personal BookCrossing Mission:
Promoting Serbian Literature and linking great Serbian writers with great world wide readers!

From Booklist:
"What would I have done?" is a fundamental question in Holocaust literature. Translated from the Serbian, this stirring novel draws on a wealth of archival materials, maps, and Nazi bureaucratic records about the concentration camp at the Belgrade Fairgrounds, from where, over five months in 1942, 5,000 Jews were loaded into a truck and gassed. A Serbian Jewish college professor looks back now and obsessively imagines himself as perpetrator, victim, and bystander. Who were the two drivers who connected the exhaust pipe each time so that the fumes killed the passengers? How did it become just a routine job? Who buried the heaped corpses? What if one kid tried to resist? How could Belgrade citizens not know? There are no chapters or even paragraphs, but the spacious text is simple and eloquent, and readers will be drawn into the professor's obsessive first-person narrative in which the horror is in the facts of bureaucratic efficiency and the unimaginable evil in ordinary life.

There is a detached, wry humour to the writing, an irony that is initially surprising but a welcome envelope for the content. The vision of Gotz and Meyer just doing their job, the horror of it lost on their desensitised souls, makes the narrator's discovery all the more powerful. This is a heartbreakingly real novel written with great compassion.

- "GÖTZ AND MEYER has a resonance beyond its own times." - Boston Globe
- "At once a novel, fictional biography, history and meta-fictional commentary, GÖTZ AND MEYER, composed in a single hallucinatory paragraph . . . [is] a masterful addition to the literature of the Holocaust and a fascinating philosophical meditation on that enormity." - San Francisco Chronicle

UPDATE: 25th OCTOBER 2008
albahari
Me with Mr. Albahari at Belgrade Book Fair

Journal Entry 2 by cymrych from Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania USA on Thursday, January 31, 2008
Borrowed this book from ZZZ while visiting him in Belgrade, Serbia.

This is a fantastic book. A horrific tale, really, yet Albahari managed quite successfully to interweave a degree of tragic comedy into the life of his main character. That balance, between the atrocities suffered by Belgradian Jews and envisioned by the narrator, and the almost jovial manner in which that narrator slowly loses his mind in the attempt to contemplate the thoughts and motives of Gotz and Meyer, makes this an extremely pleasant book to read. Well, as "pleasant" as a book about genocide can be, I suppose.

I particularly like the book's format, written in one long paragraph. It traps the reader in the book much the same way as the Belgradian Jews were trapped by their situation in 1942, or indeed, as the narrator was trapped in his own mind by having learned of the existence of two German SS non-coms named Gotz and Meyer.

Journal Entry 3 by zzz at book exchange at bookobsessed.com, Indecisive -- Controlled Releases on Friday, September 5, 2008

Released 15 yrs ago (9/5/2008 UTC) at book exchange at bookobsessed.com, Indecisive -- Controlled Releases

CONTROLLED RELEASE NOTES:

CONTROLLED RELEASE NOTES:

You said you like to experiment. Well here is something from this corner of the world, a bit challenging in the structure but highly rewarding after you close its last page. At least that was the case with me and I'm so looking forward to see your impressions :)

Journal Entry 4 by winglmn60wing from Spotswood, Victoria Australia on Saturday, November 1, 2008
Wow zzz! You sure know how to challenge a reader! This probably isn't a book I'd have picked up for myself - but then I'd have said that about 'Dictionary of the Khazars' ... and you know how much I loved that one!!!! I'm also grateful for the chance to extend my knowledge of Serbian literature - not easy to find these books in Australia!

Be back with more when I've read it!!! Thanks again!

Journal Entry 5 by winglmn60wing at Spotswood, Victoria Australia on Saturday, February 3, 2018
Oh wow.... Just realised I hadn't journalled this book after reading it last year....
Probably this is due to the fact that I really struggled with this novel - not due to the writing (which is wonderful) but the content - and suspect I put it down and walked away to let myself process it before putting down my thoughts.
Actually - it's probably also that the writing style (one long paragraph) contributed to my sense of unease - it felt like there was no escape from this journey - for the jews; for Gotz and Meyer; and for me - the reader.
This is a remarkable book - and/but a deeply disturbing one. Thanks for broadening my horizons by sharing it with me zzz - but don't be offended if I say don't share anything else like it with me!

Journal Entry 6 by winglmn60wing at Arbory Bar and Eatery in Melbourne CBD, Victoria Australia on Sunday, February 25, 2018

Released 6 yrs ago (2/25/2018 UTC) at Arbory Bar and Eatery in Melbourne CBD, Victoria Australia

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

To the finder of this book:
Hello and congratulations! You have not only found yourself a good book, but a whole community of booklovers dedicated to sharing books with each other and the world at large. I hope you'll stick around a bit and get to know BookCrossing --maybe even make a journal entry on this book. You may choose to remain anonymous or to join (its free!) And if you do choose to join, I hope you'll consider using me, lmn60, as your referring member. Feel free to read and keep this book, or to pass it on to a friend or even set it out "in the wild" for someone else to find like you did. If you do choose to join and journal, then you can watch the book as it travels- You'll be alerted by email each time someone makes another journal entry. It's all confidential (you're known only by your screen name and no one is ever given your e-mail address), free, and spam-free. Happy reading!

Journal Entry 7 by wingJean-Solwing at Melbourne CBD, Victoria Australia on Sunday, February 25, 2018
lmn60 put this one in my hands for my overseas trip, but after reading the back cover and the comments below, I don't feel it's the right fit for the poolside and a casual release, so I will keep it home and read it when I get home to Melbourne. Now I'm intrigued!

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