Fourteenyearold Gyuris father has been called up for labour service.Arriving at the family timber store he witnesses with nonchalance and boredomhis father sign... » 

Fourteenyearold Gyuris father has been called up for labour service.Arriving at the family timber store he witnesses with nonchalance and boredomhis father sign over the business to the firms bookkeeper. Two months laterhe finds himself assigned to a permanent workplace but within a fortnight heis unexpectedly pulled off a bus on his way to work and detained withoutexplanation. This is the start of his journey to and subsequent imprisonment inAuschwitz. On his arrival Gyuri finds that he is unable to identify with otherJews and in turn is rejected by them. An outsider among his own people hisestrangement makes him a preternaturally acute observer. Fatelessness powerlies in its refusal to mitigate the unfathomable alienness of the Holocaust andin the strength and strangeness of its narrative voice. «