{"id":303126,"date":"2015-12-18T15:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-12-18T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2015\/12\/18\/latest-review-this-place-holds-no-fear-by-monika-held\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T14:09:33","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T14:09:33","slug":"latest-review-this-place-holds-no-fear-by-monika-held","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2015\/12\/18\/latest-review-this-place-holds-no-fear-by-monika-held\/","title":{"rendered":"Latest Review: "This Place Holds No Fear" by Monika Held"},"content":{"rendered":"

The latest addition<\/a> to our Reviews<\/a> section is a piece by Lori Feathers on Monika Held’s This Place Holds No Fear<\/em>, translated by Anne Posten and published by Haus Publishing.<\/p>\n

Lori Feathers is a freelance book critic. Follow her on Twitter @LoriFeathers. (And Anne, if you’re reading this, THIS<\/span> is why I gave you a weird “I THINK<\/span> I MET<\/span> YOU<\/span> BEFORE<\/span> BUT<\/span> HOW<\/span>” look at ALTA<\/span> in Tuscon\u2014I had just assigned your translation of this book for review, which explains why your name was so very fresh in my memory. I’m glad to have had the opportunity to meet you in person!)<\/p>\n

Here’s the beginning of Lori’s review:<\/p>\n

\n

Heiner Resseck, the protagonist in Monika Held\u2019s thought-provoking, first novel, This Place Holds No Fear<\/em>, intentionally re-lives his past every hour of every day. His memories are his treasures, more dear than the present or future. What wonderful past eclipses holding your newborn for the first time or meeting the woman who will become your wife? For Heiner it is the 224 weeks he endured as a political prisoner at Auschwitz. What marks Held\u2019s novel as an important addition to the large body of historical fiction about the lives of camp survivors is her exploration of Heiner\u2019s psychological need to embrace his Auschwitz experiences rather than struggling to repress or overcome them.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

The narrative begins in the early 1980s and skips forward and backward across what Heiner calls his \u201cthree lives\u201d relative to Auschwitz\u2014before, there (which \u201clasted forever\u201d), and after. Raised in Vienna, Heiner joins the communist party at a young age and later, after the Nazis occupy Austria, he is arrested on political grounds, sent to Auschwitz and labeled R.U.\u2014\u201cReturn Unwanted.\u201d At Auschwitz Heiner does not shield himself from the daily horrors inflicted upon him and his fellow prisoners. He is determined to survive, to be a repository of the camp\u2019s atrocities, and after the war to expose what he witnessed. Following the war Heiner fulfills the commitment he made to himself, publishing essays about survivors\u2019 experiences and testifying as a witness at the Frankfurt-Auschwitz trials. But he never overcomes the guilt of not acting out, of failing to demonstrate his humanity by openly defying his captors at least one time during those years in captivity.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

For the rest of the review, go here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The latest addition to our Reviews section is a piece by Lori Feathers on Monika Held’s This Place Holds No Fear, translated by Anne Posten and published by Haus Publishing. Lori Feathers is a freelance book critic. Follow her on Twitter @LoriFeathers. (And Anne, if you’re reading this, THIS is why I gave you a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":166,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67456],"tags":[63326,5706,25696,56906,63316,1646,63336],"class_list":["post-303126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-review","tag-anne-posten","tag-german-literature","tag-haus-publishing","tag-lori-feathers","tag-monika-held","tag-review","tag-this-place-holds-no-fear"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/166"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303126"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303126\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":309136,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303126\/revisions\/309136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}