Fatelessness

Fatelessness is the story of one 14-year-old Hungarian boy’s incarceration in Nazi concentration camps. Gyuri finds the war in Budapest a bit of a lark, even when he is sent to do enforced work in a factory following his father’s conscription into ‘labour service’. When the bus he and his comrades travel on to work is stopped one day and all the men and boys are detained in a sentry post, and subsequently shipped by rail to Auschwitz, he still manages to retain an interest in what is happening, and to feel that things will work out for him. From Auschwitz he is transported to Buchenwald where the horror of what is happening to him and to others eventually sinks in.

The narrative is flat and unemotional for most of the time. We see events through Gyuri’s eyes, and his voice is almost clinical at times as he describes the horrors which he sees and endures. Almost calmly he describes the constant hunger, like a physical hollow in him, and his leg injury which means a stay in hospital and something of a reprieve from the horrors of the camp. Or at least a change from the routine, on which he comments as one of the most affecting things about life in the camp. Gyuri, while of Jewish birth, is not observant and on occasion he wishes he were, because this would give him something to focus on. Perhaps it is his stoical nature that helps him survive, for he does and at the conclusion returns to Budapest.

Apart from the brutality which it describes, this is definitely a book for older teens, and then not for all. Gyuri’s voice has few variations, and there are few chapter breaks. Stylistically, this gives something of a feel for what Gyuri is going through, but it may also mean that only very interested or very experienced readers will stay the pace.