The Seventh Well (Thorndike Reviewers' Choice)

"The Seventh Well" is a short autobiographical novel, whose loose, episodic chapters cover the period of 1942-5, which the author spent in German concentration camps. Flashbacks recall his early internment in France, and the book closes with the liberation of Buchenwald in April 1945. Rather than focus on his own story though, Fred Wander describes the lives and deaths of his fellow internees; the creative power of his story-telling invests their deaths with dignity, and keeps their memories alive. It was first published in 1971, then reissued with a new afterword to great acclaim in Germany in 2005, the year before the author died aged ninety. This new translation by acclaimed translator and poet Michael Hofmann captures the power and physicality of his language.