This Darkness Will Never End

The first English translation of the devastating short story collection that helped establish Edith Bruck as a major figure in Italian literature.

This Darkness Will Never End, the first short story collection by the Hungarian author and Holocaust survivor Edith Bruck, was published to acclaim in Italy in 1962. Bruck's stories are often fable-like, recounting the poignant and colorful lives of poor Jewish families in Europe before, during, and immediately following World War II. In nearly all of the stories, the Holocaust hovers over the reader--either looming ahead as a fate that cannot be avoided or lurking in the background as the past that can never be escaped.

In the title story, believed by some film scholars to have inspired the Oscar-winning movie Life Is Beautiful, a young girl shepherds her blind, sickly brother as they are deported. In "Come to the Window, It's Christmas," a Jewish girl is caught up in her friends' celebrations. When her friends stand below her window singing carols, their casual anti-Semitism reveals the unspoken tension tearing her parents apart. In the most colorful story, a young girl must consult the fearsome shochet--the monitor who slaughters livestock to determine if food is kosher--and return home with the bad news that the family goose doesn't pass muster. As she turns away with the bloody goose over her shoulder, she threads her way through the crowd of poor Jewish women bartering with their Christian neighbors to dispose of the animals they are now forbidden to eat.

The stories in This Darkness Will Never End, beautifully translated from the Italian by Jeanne Bonner, offer a glimpse into a bygone world and testify to the resilience of survivors like Bruck who recall loved ones and cherished traditions and how the War shattered their domestic bliss.