Title: The Tattooist of Auschwitz
Author: Heather Morris
Genre: Fiction based on true story, Biography, Holocaust
Published: 2018
BookMarks
“The Tattooist of Auschwitz” is a fictional take on the life of Lale Sokolov and his incarceration in Auschwitz. The story is simultaneously one of brutality and the never-dying hope. It is a story of a determination to survive the horrors all around even though there are not many signs of things going in your favour. It is also tale of people fighting for themselves as well as one another in a quest to survive.
While the novel is set inside a concentration camp, it somehow does not bring up the real horrors of them. They are mentioned in passing, sometimes directly witnessed by the protagonists and yet somehow the true impact just does not hit the reader. Probably on account of the easy writing style which glosses over the more terrible brutalities. Or it could be because the protagonist is one filled with a firm belief of hope, which dims the rest of tragedies unfolding around him.
Some of the situations described are simply too fantastic. For instance, throughout the story, never really understood why Lale was given certain privileges for tattooing numbers on to all new arrivals to the camp. This wasn’t exactly a job of high skill and replacements were readily available. But one never knows, the truth is always stranger than fiction.
Overall, a decent read. I certainly did not like the almost celebratory sounding notes of the author at the end when the Slovak edition of the book is launched.
Previously on BookMarks: Don’t Go There
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