Otto Schrag Knihy

In an unusual but compelling approach to storytelling, When Europe Was a Prison Camp weaves together two accounts of a family's eventual escape from Occupied Europe. One, a fictionalized memoir written by the father in 1941; the other, begun by the son in the 1980s, fills in the story of himself and mother, supplemented by historical research. The result is both personal and provocative, involving as it does issues of history and memory, fiction and "truth," courage and resignation. This is not a "Holocaust memoir." The Schrags were Jews, and Otto was interned, under execrable conditions, in southern France. But Otto, with the help of a heroic wife, escaped the camp before the start of massive transfers of prisoners "to the East," and Peter and his mother escaped from Belgium before the Jews were rounded up and sent to Auschwitz. Still, the danger and suffering, the comradeship and betrayal, the naïve hopes and cynical despair of those in prison and those in peril are everywhere in evidence.

Ein weltberühmter Klassiker der amerikanischen Nachkriegsliteratur, der seinen Siegeszug um die Welt antrat und kurz nach Erscheinen verfilmt wurde. Erzählt wird die Geschichte des einfachen amerikanischen Soldaten Priwitt, der mit seiner Kompanie auf Hawaii stationiert ist. Weil er glaubt, auch als Soldat ein Anrecht auf eine menschliche Behandlung zu haben, beginnt eine erbitterte Auseinandersetzung zwischen ihm und seinem Vorgesetzten. ›Verdammt in alle Ewigkeit‹ zeichnet ein schonungsloses Porträt der amerikanischen Armee auf Hawaii kurz vor der Katastrophe. Mit dem Fall japanischer Bomben auf Pearl Harbor tritt Amerika in den Zweiten Weltkrieg ein.

Diamond Head, Hawaii, 1941. Pvt. Robert E. Lee Prewitt is a champion welterweight and a fine bugler. But when he refuses to join the company's boxing team, he gets "the treatment" that may break him or kill him. First Sgt. Milton Anthony Warden knows how to soldier better than almost anyone, yet he's risking his career to have an affair with the commanding officer's wife. Both Warden and Prewitt are bound by a common bond: the Army is their heart and blood . . .and, possibly, their death. In this magnificent but brutal classic of a soldier's life, James Jones portrays the courage, violence and passions of men and women who live by unspoken codes and with unutterable despair. . .in the most important American novel to come out of World War II, a masterpiece that captures as no ther the honor and savagery of men.