The ghetto within : a novel
(Book)

"A critical sensation in France, Santiago Amigorena re-imagines his Jewish grandfather--a Polish immigrant in Argentina in the 1930s--and the tragic events that defined his life as he fails to rescue his mother and siblings from a Warsaw ghetto in this novel about identity, guilt, and the unshakable power of love"-- Provided by publisher.

In Buenos Aires, the afternoon of September 13, 1940 was rainy and the war in Europe so remote that one might still have thought it was peacetime. Buenos Aires, 1940. Three friends, fellow Polish exiles, meet at a cafe. What caused them to flee Europe by boat a few years earlier when others facing the same danger did not? And amid this relocation, what should they call themselves now? Jewish? Pole? Argentinian? They will mull over these questions of identity and allegiance for the rest of their lives. Vicente Rosenberg is but one of many European migrants making a new life in Argentina. It is in Buenos Aires that he meets and marries Rosita, whose ties to Poland are more ancestral than emotional. They have three children and pursue a quiet, normal family life. Yet, Vicente still aches for his mother, Gustawa, who remained in Warsaw. For years, she writes him several times a month. Over time, the letters become increasingly infrequent. And one day, they stop coming altogether. Racked with guilt and anxiety over his mother's fate, Vicente falls into a deep despair and longstanding silence.

Translated from the French.