Chasing the King of Hearts

Book excerpt: Winner of the 2018 PEN Translation Prize. “Krall’s newly translated story of love during the Holocaust is a profound and uplifting masterpiece.” —The Guardian In this canonical work of Polish reportage, Hanna Krall crafts a terse and unexpected human lesson out of a Holocaust novel and love story. A raw interplay of history and fiction spanning the Warsaw Ghetto, Auschwitz, and Zionist Israel, this bestselling novel won the English PEN Award and the Found in Translation Award. One of Publishers Weekly’s Best Books of 2017 “The prose never once seems out of the author’s control, displaying precisely the serious artistry required to elevate and illuminate such harrowing material.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) “Krall’s unique voice . . . dominates this detached, surreal, curiously playful tale of a woman of indefatigable resourcefulness trapped between history and her heart. A quirky but exceptional story of infinite love and life-sustaining commitment.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “Hanna Krall brings Izolda R. to life through dry, factual, rhythmic prose—a litany whose cumulative effect powerfully endears her to readers.” —Slavenka Drakulic, author of Café Europa Revisted “A stirring and powerful document that, while marvelously concise, stands at the crossroads of the horrible history of humanity in the twentieth century.” —Eric Alterman, New York Times-bestselling author of Lying in State “A remarkable find . . . The style is bluntly simple, like the affectless telling of a fable. The reader is held at a distance by a tone that is so studiedly neutral as to be almost jaunty, yet because it is relating the most appalling atrocities it becomes the more affecting.” —The Sunday Times