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emasvingerova's review against another edition
3.0
Nevím, nějak mi nesedl styl psaní autorky, trochu hůř jsem kvůli němu příběh a souvislosti chápala, i když je rozhodně zajímavý a v žurnalistice je způsob psaní Hanny Krall přelomový.
osed123's review
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
ridgewaygirl's review
5.0
Chasing the King of Hearts tells the story of Izolda, who meets Shayek in Warsaw during WWII and marries him. They live first in the ghetto until Izolda, who is unrelentingly resourceful and determined, smuggles herself out. She manages to get Shayek out too, as well as their parents but the war is harsh and unrelenting and over time their family members disappear or are arrested. Shayek is eventually arrested and all of Izolda's ingenuity is focused on getting to him. She endures much and survives because of her ability to think on her feet and to take any chances she sees.
From the beginning of the story we know that Izolda survives. There are segments set long after the war, when Izolda is an elderly woman living in Israel trying to tell her story to her grandchildren. The reader knows that she lives, but how she survives makes for quite a story. Izolda is a real person, who found the author, Hanna Krall, and asked her to write her story for her. Krall is well respected as a journalist in Poland and documents people's experiences in a narrative style much like Svetlana Alexievich. Here, she tells Izolda's story in a straight-forward way, eliding much of the harsher moments, but without omitting them. The reader knows Izolda is raped or that the conditions of her imprisonment were harsh, but these events are presented as facts, less important than her overriding need to find her husband.
She follows the policewoman.
The nearest station is on Poznanska Street. Not a good place, getting out won't be easy.
She has her pearl ring. She thinks: Should I give it to her right away? And why did she say you're all alike? By all she means Jews. Excuse me, Ma'am, she risks the question. What did you mean by all alike? Stop playing dumb--the policewoman now makes no effort to be polite. I'm from the vice squad, now do you understand?
Now she understands.
They're not taking her for a Jew but for a whore. What a relief, thank God, they're just taking me for a whore.
The sheer number of close calls and daring escapes experienced by this single woman would sound unlikely in a novel, but Izolda's personality and determination made each unlikely moment feel inevitable. This is an extraordinary story.
From the beginning of the story we know that Izolda survives. There are segments set long after the war, when Izolda is an elderly woman living in Israel trying to tell her story to her grandchildren. The reader knows that she lives, but how she survives makes for quite a story. Izolda is a real person, who found the author, Hanna Krall, and asked her to write her story for her. Krall is well respected as a journalist in Poland and documents people's experiences in a narrative style much like Svetlana Alexievich. Here, she tells Izolda's story in a straight-forward way, eliding much of the harsher moments, but without omitting them. The reader knows Izolda is raped or that the conditions of her imprisonment were harsh, but these events are presented as facts, less important than her overriding need to find her husband.
She follows the policewoman.
The nearest station is on Poznanska Street. Not a good place, getting out won't be easy.
She has her pearl ring. She thinks: Should I give it to her right away? And why did she say you're all alike? By all she means Jews. Excuse me, Ma'am, she risks the question. What did you mean by all alike? Stop playing dumb--the policewoman now makes no effort to be polite. I'm from the vice squad, now do you understand?
Now she understands.
They're not taking her for a Jew but for a whore. What a relief, thank God, they're just taking me for a whore.
The sheer number of close calls and daring escapes experienced by this single woman would sound unlikely in a novel, but Izolda's personality and determination made each unlikely moment feel inevitable. This is an extraordinary story.
sammypb10's review
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
sad
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
3.75
andrew61's review
4.0
This book is very short at about 160 pages and the chapters are similarly short so it reads like a page turning thriller as we follow the life of Izolda , a young woman in Warsaw at the outbreak of the war , through the period of the war . It was after I put it down the first time that I realised that in being so taken with the tale I hadn't really appreciated the horror of Izolda's experiences which had included the loss of family and friends, sexual assault , torture by a gestapo officer in prison, and transfer to Auschwitz. So I immediately read it again.
I suspect some of this experience is due to the prose style which does not dwell on the horror but as a reader we are able to bring our own empathy and understanding of what such experience will have cost the narrator. Additionally time seems irrelevant as we open as Izolda meets her husband Shayek, is quickly married and finds her family within the ghetto. Within 150 pages we move rapidly as she tries to reunite with Shayek before we find ourselves in a liberated camp mauthausen outside Vienna. If it wasn't based on a true story the style would have made this book feel slight but it is when I put it down that I was astonished at what a unique story it was told in a style which in the end added to it's impact ( I am sure that someone else can express what I mean to say here more ably).
The final pages are Izolda in her old age in Israel reflecting with her family around, a family concerned with their own immediate problems with dwarf next to those of the silent woman in their midst.
I would thoroughly recommend this book.
I suspect some of this experience is due to the prose style which does not dwell on the horror but as a reader we are able to bring our own empathy and understanding of what such experience will have cost the narrator. Additionally time seems irrelevant as we open as Izolda meets her husband Shayek, is quickly married and finds her family within the ghetto. Within 150 pages we move rapidly as she tries to reunite with Shayek before we find ourselves in a liberated camp mauthausen outside Vienna. If it wasn't based on a true story the style would have made this book feel slight but it is when I put it down that I was astonished at what a unique story it was told in a style which in the end added to it's impact ( I am sure that someone else can express what I mean to say here more ably).
The final pages are Izolda in her old age in Israel reflecting with her family around, a family concerned with their own immediate problems with dwarf next to those of the silent woman in their midst.
I would thoroughly recommend this book.
kate_in_a_book's review
4.0
This is a true story from World War Two, retold by a journalist who herself survived the war by hiding in a cupboard. Which sounds like quite a story itself, but possibly not one as eventful as that of Izolda.
Izolda Regensberg is a Jewish woman whose history took her from the ghetto in Warsaw, to working for the Underground, to various workcamps and even Auschwitz. But we know early on this book that she survived, thanks to interspersed chapters about her attempts to communicate with her Israeli grandchildren.
Language is key to this amazing story. Language and love.
Read my full review: http://www.noseinabook.co.uk/2019/10/03/what-exactly-about-the-bag-is-jewish/
Izolda Regensberg is a Jewish woman whose history took her from the ghetto in Warsaw, to working for the Underground, to various workcamps and even Auschwitz. But we know early on this book that she survived, thanks to interspersed chapters about her attempts to communicate with her Israeli grandchildren.
Language is key to this amazing story. Language and love.
Read my full review: http://www.noseinabook.co.uk/2019/10/03/what-exactly-about-the-bag-is-jewish/
scarpuccia's review
5.0
This is the fictionalised true story of Izolda Regensberg and her WW2 experiences which include escaping from the Warsaw Ghetto via the sewers, impersonating an Aryan woman during which she is persecuted by doubts that Jews have a distinctive way of performing virtually every commonplace gesture and being deported to a variety of camps, including Auschwitz. The king of hearts of the title is her young husband Shayek. The laconic, almost breezy tone of this novel, written in the present tense in simple terse sentences, is unique among Holocaust fiction. The horrors of the Holocaust Izolda experiences as inconveniences, obstacles in preventing her from her mission which is to rescue her beloved husband from Mauthausen concentration camp. Often in fictional accounts of the Holocaust characters are depicted as bewildered, terrified, horrified: big life changing emotions are continually pumped into the text: not surprisingly there’s a failure of imagination in the author’s power of empathy. Izolda is never prey to such sweeping all-consuming emotions; she is pragmatic, battle-hardened, nervously alert rather than terrified, and as a result her voice rings much truer than most Holocaust fiction. You get a sense of how relentless horror becomes the everyday norm you have to take in your stride, of how often you have to look the other way unless your spirit is to be annihilated. Izolda is tortured by the Gestapo, twice she finds herself at Auschwitz; she even makes Dr Mengele laugh and yet she understates all these experiences as hurdles to be surmounted rather than horrific monumental moments of spiritual disintegration. The novella is no less moving after the war when Izolda, now in Israel, is called upon by her family to evaluate and articulate her wartime experiences and we see the damage the war did to her and her family. It’s a short book, incredibly easy on the eye but deeply moving and, one feels, much truer to the day by day emotional reality of the Holocaust than most other fictional accounts.
Thanks to Roger and his fantastic review (much better than mine!) for leading me to this moving and memorable book.
Thanks to Roger and his fantastic review (much better than mine!) for leading me to this moving and memorable book.
katka's review against another edition
3.0
Tohle mi upřímně fakt moc nesedlo, styl Hanny Krall je na mě moc... mimochodem. Zásadní věci se dějí jakoby bokem a mně dalo hrozně práce to dočíst.
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