Jewish Literary Review

Posted on December 13, 2007 by Steve Pollak

Critical acclaim for ‘The Seventh Well’

I’d be remiss if I didn’t note the critical acclaim recently bestowed upon a newly translated Holocaust novel, “The Seventh Well,” by Fred Wander.

Born in Vienna in 1917, Wander left Austria in 1938 and headed to France. Soon after the Germans came to Paris, Wander was taken captive and spent the next six years shuffling between 20 different concentration camps. At one point, he landed in Auschwitz but the authorities later sent him to Buchenwald.

After the war, he lived in East Germany and worked as a journalist, photographer and travel writer. It took him a while to put his experiences down on paper and, according to the reviews, he only did that at the urging of friends and colleagues. The resulting book was first published in East Germany in 1971.

Now, it has been translated into English for the first time (by Michael Hofmann) and, so far, the critics like it.

Here’s an excerpt from a review by Benjamin Lytal in yesterday’s New York Sun:

If it is not too late to add a book to the shelf that holds Primo Levi, Elie Wiesel, and Art Speigelman, “The Seventh Well,” translated by Michael Hoffman, will go there. It is as complete and affecting a tale as the others, and it contributes something new to this canon: bonhomie.

Here’s an excerpt from a review by Jonathan Kelly in the San Francisco Chronicle:

Some novels are imagined, others are lived. The slim but immensely powerful “The Seventh Well,” is the latter. Originally published in the German Democratic Republic in 1970, translator Michael Hofmann has done Wander’s prose justice in its first English printing. Wander, who died last year in Vienna at age 90, will be remembered for his remarkable understanding of the largeness of life. Unlike Primo Levi, who completed his memoir “If This Is a Man” (known in English as “Survival in Auschwitz”) right after his emancipation, Wander, by then a journalist and travel writer, was urged to write “The Seventh Well” by friends and colleagues.

It’s too bad Wander did not live to see his book translated into English. He died in Vienna last year at the age of 89.

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2 Responses to Critical acclaim for ‘The Seventh Well’

1. JewWishes says:

   December 13, 2007 at 9:11 pm

   I certainly want to purchase this book after reading this post.

   It is too bad that Wander didn’t live to see his book translated into English. But, his words and life will live on…

   Reply
2. Steve Pollak says:

   December 13, 2007 at 10:50 pm

   that is very true.

   i also can’t wait to get my copy to the book.

   so much to read, so little time.

   Reply