by Gail Hareven
From the 2010 winner of the Best Translated Book Award comes a harrowing, controversial novel about a woman's revenge, Jewish identity, and how to talk about Adolf Hitler in today's world.
Elinor's comfortable life—popular newspaper column, stable marriage, well-adjusted kids—is totally upended when she finds out that her estranged uncle is coming to Jerusalem to give a speech asking forgiveness for his decades-old book, Hitler, First Person.
A shocking novel that galvanized the Jewish diaspora, Hitler, First Person was Aaron Gotthilf's attempt to understand—and explain—what it would have been like to be Hitler. As if that wasn't disturbing enough, while writing this controversial novel, Gotthilf stayed in Elinor's parent's house and sexually assaulted her "slow" sister.
In the time leading up to Gotthilf's visit, Elinor will relive the reprehensible events of that time so long ago, over and over, compulsively, while building up the courage—and plan—to avenge her sister in the most conclusive way possible: by murdering Gotthilf, her own personal Hilter.
Along the way to the inevitable confrontation, Gail Hareven uses an obsessive, circular writing style to raise questions about Elinor's mental state, which in turn makes the reader question the veracity of the supposed memoir that they're reading. Is it possible that Elinor is following in her uncle's writerly footpaths, using a first-person narrative to manipulate the reader into forgiving a horrific crime?
Gail Hareven is the author of eleven novels, including The Confessions of Noa Weber, which won both the Sapir Prize for Literature and the Best Translated Book Award.
Dalya Bilu is the translator of A.B. Yehoshua, Aharon Appelfeld, and many others.
From the 2010 winner of the Best Translated Book Award comes a harrowing, controversial novel about a woman's revenge, Jewish identity, and how to talk about Adolf Hitler in today's world.
Elinor's comfortable life—popular newspaper column, stable marriage, well-adjusted kids—is totally upended when she finds out that her estranged uncle is coming to Jerusalem to give a speech asking forgiveness for his decades-old book, Hitler, First Person.
A shocking novel that galvanized the Jewish diaspora, Hitler, First Person was Aaron Gotthilf's attempt to understand—and explain—what it would have been like to be Hitler. As if that wasn't disturbing enough, while writing this controversial novel, Gotthilf stayed in Elinor's parent's house and sexually assaulted her "slow" sister.
In the time leading up to Gotthilf's visit, Elinor will relive the reprehensible events of that time so long ago, over and over, compulsively, while building up the courage—and plan—to avenge her sister in the most conclusive way possible: by murdering Gotthilf, her own personal Hilter.
Along the way to the inevitable confrontation, Gail Hareven uses an obsessive, circular writing style to raise questions about Elinor's mental state, which in turn makes the reader question the veracity of the supposed memoir that they're reading. Is it possible that Elinor is following in her uncle's writerly footpaths, using a first-person narrative to manipulate the reader into forgiving a horrific crime?
Gail Hareven is the author of eleven novels, including The Confessions of Noa Weber, which won both the Sapir Prize for Literature and the Best Translated Book Award.
Dalya Bilu is the translator of A.B. Yehoshua, Aharon Appelfeld, and many others.
Reviews-
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December 1, 2014
Hareven’s book starts with a disclaimer: “You should never believe writers, even when they pretend to be telling the truth. Everything... here is pure fiction.” Not exactly big news in a novel, but when narrator Elinor says her lawyer husband insisted on this introduction, the reader’s antenna goes up. Could the story be true? This is just one of the tricks Hareven (The Confessions of Noa Weber) gets up to. There’s also the title: does it refer to lies told in the first person—that is, by the narrator—or those told by her father’s cousin, the author of a novel within the novel told in Hitler’s voice, titled, yes, Hitler, First Person. Aaron Gotthilf, Elinor’s Uncle,
has been punished for the book (bad reviews, banning, hate mail), but he’s gone unpunished for repeatedly raping Elinor’s older, more timid sister, Elisheva. The rapes more or less destroyed the Jerusalem-based Gotthilf family, precipitating breakdowns, suicide, and abandonment; that Elinor is a happily married columnist and her sister has made a new life in America seems almost miraculous. But Elinor’s Eden is threatened when Aaron comes to Jerusalem to apologize (for the book, not the rape). Well translated, the novel is tart and testy, filled with insight into writers’ ability to lie, omit, and fabricate. -
Starred review from December 1, 2014
An Israeli woman plots revenge against the relative who raped her sister-and wrote an imagined autobiography of Adolf Hitler besides-in a coruscating novel about faith and family.Elinor, the middle-aged narrator of the second novel by Hareven to be translated into English (The Confessions of Noa Weber, 2009), lives a comfortable life in Jerusalem with her husband, Oded, and writes a newspaper column about the quirky adventures of an imagined immigrant to the city. Her just-so existence is undone, though, when she learns that her uncle, Aaron, is visiting Israel from the United States. Aaron is making an apology tour for a novel he wrote decades before, Hitler, First Person, and his re-emergence stokes Elinor's memories of how he repeatedly sexually assaulted her sister, Elisheva, when he was writing the novel in the family home. In the months before Aaron's arrival, Elinor and Oded head to the U.S. to visit their sons but also take a detour to central Illinois, where Elisheva has started a family, converted to Christianity and-to Elinor's disgust-not only corresponded with Aaron, but forgiven him. ("She doesn't want a trial," Elinor moans to Oded. "She wants him to ascend to heaven with her.") How much does Elinor owe her sister if she's moved on? How much did Aaron's imagination of Hitler's evil spill over into his own monstrousness? And how much does Elinor's urge "to see Aaron burn" only perpetuate the problem? Hareven's novel is a brilliant and careful study of those questions, capturing Elinor's ever accelerating rage while maintaining a prose style that's poised and philosophical. The Garden of Eden is a persistent trope in the novel, as Elinor keeps imagining her home as a refuge; but when Oded becomes conscripted into her obsession, it's clear we remain in a stubbornly post-lapsarian world. A rich and harrowing novel with plenty to say about religion and authorship.COPYRIGHT(2014) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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June 1, 2015
A reasonably successful newspaper columnist and happy wife and mother, Elinor lives in the Garden of Eden--Jerusalem, that is--until a phone call from her uncle in America brings it all crashing down. As Elinor reacts viscerally ("Stop calling him a person," she snaps at her husband), we quickly learn that the uncle not only wrote a controversial book called Hitler, First Person but assaulted Elinor's sister. Now he's visiting, seeking public pardon for the book, and in a swift, engaging run-up to a violent climax, Elinor tells her side of the story. Is she bending the truth? VERDICT This follow-up to The Confessions of Noa Weber (winner of the Best Translated Book Award) is a well-crafted psychological study and thriller-like read.
Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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David Cooper, New York Journal of Books
"There are books that make us feel intensely and others that make us think deeply; one that does both is Gail Hareven's opalescent and psychologically complex eleventh novel Lies, First Person, which is only the second (The Confessions of Noa Weber) of her 13 books for adults to be published in English in Dalya Bilu's fine translation. [. . .] Kudos to university press Open Letter Books for bringing us this multifaceted book that rewards rereading."
- Foreword Reviews "Hareven's brilliant writing is simply irresistible as she traces two sisters' emotional journeys through recovering from a childhood trauma."
- Boris Fishman, The New York Times Lies, First Person isn't a tragedy. As Elinor becomes the woman who hates, she can't say that she hates it ... It's a bracing and, refreshingly, not very American idea, as is the novel's refusal to renounce all violence as a false, or at least costly, remedy. (No novel of hate has ended so cheerfully.)"
- Kirkus Reviews "An Israeli woman plots revenge against the relative who raped her sister--and wrote an imagined autobiography of Adolf Hitler besides--in a coruscating novel about faith and family [...]A rich and harrowing novel with plenty to say about religion and authorship."
- Jessa Crispin, The Guardian "Hareven has written a complex, humane novel that is not easily forgotten. It shakes your complacency – as it should."
- Newcity Lit "An intriguing work that gets close to the mind of an unrepentant criminal. An often tense and sometimes funny book, Hareven both thrills and leaves her readers with serious conundrums."
