An Estate of Memory

An Estate of Memory by Karmel, Ilona. paperback edition. ISBN: 9780935312645.

An Estate of Memory is a spiritual novel of growth and regeneration, even in the midst of brutality and death, that recreates in precise detail the daily lives of Jewish women in a Nazi concentration camp in Poland. The taste and feel of the days and seasons, of the varieties of work, are palpable, and the pre-camp memories of the prisoners braid the narrative brilliantly. The novel testifies to survival through cooperation, as it focuses on four women who join together at first to improve their own lives, and ultimately to save the life of a baby. As Adrienne Rich notes, An Estate of Memory is “a woman’s eye view of living beyond the point where life is supposed to have meaning.”