Badenheim 1939 (Masterplots II: World Fiction Series)
At a glance:
- Author: Aharon Appelfeld
- First Published: 1975
- Type of Work: Historical fiction
- Time of Work: 1939
- Setting: Badenheim, an Austrian resort town
- Principal Characters: The Holocaust, The Sanitation Department, Dr. Pappenheim, Trude, Samitzky
- Genres: Long fiction, Historical fiction, Parable
- Subjects: 1930’s, Jews or Jewish life, Austria or Austrians, Holocaust, Jewish, Totalitarianism, Persecution
- Locales: Badenheim, Austria
The Novel
Badenheim 1939 displays a sequence of both realistic and symbolic events beginning in early spring of 1939 in the resort town of Badenheim and ending with the deportation of the Jews in late fall of the same year. A third-person narrator, in detached and understated style, reports the steps taken by the Sanitation Department to gain control of the town and abridge the freedoms of its inhabitants, while revealing how specific people react to each succeeding deprivation.
In 1939, amid swirls of unidentified rumors, the novel opens as a foreboding,...
[The entire page is 2670 words long]
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