Man of Ashes

Book excerpt: Salomon Isacovici was born to a farming family in western Romania. One day in 1940 his family woke as Hungarians, re-nationalised overnight by the changing borders of World War II. To other Hungarians they were Jews, and week by week their world grew worse. In 1944 the Germans arrived and Isacovici, his family, and every other Jew from his town were pushed into cattle cars and taken ever closer to the soot and smoke of Auschwitz. He became a man of ashes. Man of Ashes was first published in Mexico in 1990 as A7393: Hombre de cenizas and was awarded the Fernando Jeno Prize. The English translation has been thoroughly revised in collaboration with Salomon Isacovici. Dick Gerdes is a professor of Spanish at George Mason University. He won the Soeurette Diehl Fraser Award for his translation of Diamela Eltit's The Fourth World (Nebraska 1995).