When Heshel Rosenheim, apparently suffering from Alzheimerβs disease, hands his son, Michael, a box of moldy old journals, an amazing adventure beginsβone that takes the reader from the concentration camps of Poland to an improbable love story during the battle for Palestine, from a cancer ward in New Jersey to a hopeless marriage in San Francisco. The journals, which seem to tell the story of Heshelβs life, are so harrowing, so riveting, so passionate, and so perplexing that Michael becomes obsessed with discovering the truth about his father.
As Michael struggles to come to grips with his fatherβs elusive past, a world of complex and disturbing possibilities opens up to himβa world in which an accomplice to genocide may have turned into a virtuous Jew and a young man cannot recall murdering the person he loves most; a world in which truth is fiction and fiction is truth and one manβs terribleβor triumphantβtransformation calls history itself into question. Michael must then solve the biggest riddle of all: Who am I?
This book has been in my TBR pile for 3-4 years and I finally picked it up as my book club chose it as a last minute choice. So glad the dice rolled that way as this was a well told interesting book that bristled with a touch of mystery while really examining secrets, family relationships, faith, love and loss. These serious topics were told from the voice of a comedian so there were welcome touches of humor peppered through the book. The identity of who a person is at heart versus who we believe they are was paramount throughout the book. A few parts of the story didnβt add up which led to a great discussion for this book.
Amoral, cunning, ruthless, and instructive, this multi-million-copy New York Times bestseller is the definitive manual for anyone interested in gaining, observing, or defending against ultimate control β from the author of The Laws of Human Nature. I... read more