Critics' Opinion:
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Published Apr 2014
208 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
Jascha and Lilka separately fled from the Warsaw Ghetto in 1942. Reunited years later, they live in London where Jascha has become a celebrated writer, feted for his dark tales about his war adventures. One day, forty years after the war, Jascha receives a letter inviting him to give a reading in Warsaw. He tells Lilka that nothing remains of the city they knew and that wild horses couldn't drag him back. Nostalgic for the city of her childhood, Lilka prevails; together, traveling by train through a frozen December landscape, they return to the city of their past. When they unwittingly find themselves back in what was once the ghetto, they will discover that they still have secrets between them.
A riveting story of the nature of desire and the cost of survival, The Train to Warsaw is a haunting and unforgettable portrait of a man and a woman who cannot escape their past.
"In polished prose of distilled intensity... Edelman has written a well-crafted study of exile and return." - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. Edelman skillfully reveals the characters' deepest misgivings and regrets, as both realize they will never be at home in this world, except—and only sporadically—with each other." - Kirkus Reviews
"Every exile dreams of the return home. Edelman's intimate tale lets us eavesdrop on a couple's return to Warsaw, traversing decades of conflict, betrayal, and secrecy—in war as in marriage. Love, it turns out may be the only country one ever has hopes of returning home to." - André Aciman, author of Out of Egypt: A Memoir
"Gwen Edelman's spare, intimate narrative belies the sweeping devastation of what's beneath: the alternating rage and despair of survival; and a desperate love that spans a lifetime... I could not put it down. This is a fearless, achingly important work of fiction." - Jamie Quatro, author of I Want to Show You More
This information about The Train to Warsaw was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Gwen Edelman is the author of The Train to Warsaw, a novel published by Grove Press in April 2014.
Her first novel, War Story, was translated into eight languages, won the Prix du Premier Roman Étranger in France, and was a Koret Jewish Book Award finalist. She lived for many years in Paris and now lives in New York.
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