A Scrap of Time and Other Stories
Ida Fink
1985 Polish edition (publ. MYJL)
Original titleSkrawek czasu
TranslatorMadeline Levine and Francine Prose
PublishedPantheon Books, 1987
Pages165
AwardsAnne Frank Prize, PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize
ISBN9780394558066
OCLC609356447
LC ClassPG7165 .I44 S513 1987

A Scrap of Time and Other Stories, written by Ida Fink, is a collection of fictional short stories relating various characters to the Jewish experience of the Holocaust.[1] Originally written in Polish, it was translated by Madeline Levine and Francine Prose. The novel won the first Anne Frank Prize, as well as the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize. Published in 1987, this collection of stories illustrates the continuing effect of the Holocaust on the Jewish psyche.

List of stories

Short stories in the collection:[2]

  • A Scrap of Time
  • The Garden That Floated Away
  • Behind the Hedge
  • '*****'
  • A Dog
  • Jean-Christophe
  • The Key Game
  • A Spring Morning
  • A Conversation
  • The Black Beast
  • Aryan Papers
  • Inspector von Galoshinsky
  • The Pig
  • Titina
  • Night of Surrender
  • The Tenth Man
  • Crazy
  • Jump!
  • The Other Shore
  • Splinter
  • The Shelter
  • Traces
  • The Table

Reception

In her review of the book for The New York Times, Johanna Kaplan wrote that "nearly all the stories in this idiomatically translated book arise from a premise or a situation that is compelling and, briefly, chillingly alive with fictional possibility". She says that the book "raises poignant, truculent ghosts, and their bewildered echoing voices - arguing, dreaming, accusing, lamenting, remembering and refusing to remember - allow us poweful imaginaive passage to an unimaginably infernal world".[3]

American book review magazine Kirkus Reviews said "each brief story is crystallized around moments when quietly ordinary people, living secure and ordered existences, enter nightmare" and praised Fink for telling "poignant, wrenching tales, told with skill and unwavering focus".[4]

Thomas Klein wrote in Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry Volume 12, that the collection of stories "offer a haunting, uncompromising view of lives that have been disrupted and terminated". He also notes that the short stories "include no crematoria, no selections, and no merciless views of life in the camps, but their absence does not mitigate the sadness, futility, and the omnipresent 'why'." He concludes that Fink's writing offers "spare, quiet stories that disturb in a far more upsetting way", and that "they threaten our very beliefs in an essential human dignity and innocence".[5]

Chris Power, literary critic for The Guardian, praised the book as well, writing that the short stories were "tightly focused stories ... that "should be remembered as vital historical witness and as great literature". He singles out the short The Shelter as "a classically constructed horror story that is one of the best examples of the genre" [Holocaust], that he has ever read. He also opines that Fink's book "has a vital part to play in our understanding of the Holocaust".[6]

Film adaption

The short stories "A Conversation" and "A Spring Morning" were adapted into a 2008 film titled Spring 1941.[7]

References

  1. ↑ Fink, Ida (1995). A Scrap of Time and Other Stories (reprint ed.). Northwestern University Press. ISBN 978-0-8101-1259-9.
  2. ↑ "Contents". A Scrap of Time and Other Stories. ISBN 978-0-8101-1259-9.
  3. ↑ Kaplan ., Johanna (July 12, 1987). "Bad Dreams With No Awakening". Book Review. The New York Times. pp. BR7, BR9.
  4. ↑ Kobak, Jim (June 15, 1987). "A Scrap Of Time And Other Stories". Kirkus Reviews. Vol. 55.
  5. ↑ Klein, Thomas (November 1, 1999). "A Scrap of Time and Other Stories". In Bartal, Israel; Polonsky, Antony (eds.). Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry Volume 12: Focusing on Galicia: Jews, Poles and Ukrainians 1772-1918. Liverpool University Press. pp. 354–355. doi:10.3828/liverpool/9781874774594.001.0001. ISBN 9781874774594.
  6. ↑ Power, Chris (May 8, 2020). "I wish more people would read … A Scrap of Time by Ida Fink". The Guardian.
  7. ↑ Yudilovitch, Merav (July 17, 2007). "Joseph Fiennes takes on a Jewish identity". Ynet. Retrieved March 11, 2021.
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