German Book Office's December Pick: The Seventh Well

The German Book Office's book selection for December is The Seventh Well by Fred Wander, translated and with an afterword by Michael Hofmann (Norton, $23.95, 9780393065381/0393065383), published here this month.

Wander was born in Vienna in 1917, survived 20 concentration camps during World War II and later worked as a journalist in East Germany. The GBO called this book, first published in 1970 in East Germany and recently republished in German, "a stark, haunting novel that does not spare the reader gruesome details, yet distills from the forced labor, hunger, and death marches the enduring value of each human spirit that even death cannot diminish."

The Seventh Well "opens in Auschwitz as Mendel Teichmann, a 50-year-old atheist and storyteller, weaves a tale for his fellow inmates, helping them to temporarily forget their surroundings. Throughout the book, the narrator brings the reader into the fold of prison life and records its effect on a host of haunting and memorable characters. Men from all stations of life populate the story, each given a chance to reveal themselves as they were and as they are. Exposed in a frantic rush of poetic language, characters appear and many disappear, leaving palpable emptiness and loss."

A panel discussion with translator Michael Hofmann will take place in New York City at the Austrian Cultural Forum on January 24. Wander died last year.