Background Reading (and Movie) List

FICTION

…about Jews in Poland and/or the Holocaust

  • H.G. Adler, The Wall (translated by Peter Fill-ins)

  • Martin Amis, The Zone of Interest

  • Aharon Appelfeld, For Every Sin (translated by Jeffrey M. Green)

  • V.R. Barkowski, A Twist of Hate

  • James Carroll, The Cloister

  • Michael Chabon, Moonglow

  • Natalie Danford, Inheritance: A Novel

  • Joan Dempsey, This Is How It Begins

  • Luce D'Eramo, Deviation: A Novel (translated by Anne Milano Appel)

  • Tatiana de Rosnay, Sarah’s Key

  • Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

  • Dasa Drndic, Trieste (translated by Ellen Elias-Bursac)

  • Gwen Edelman, The Train to Warsaw

  • Jennifer Cody Epstein, Wunderland

  • Linda Grant, The Clothes on their Backs

  • Kristin Hannah, The Nightingale

  • Georgia Hunter, We Were the Lucky Ones

  • Nancy Huston, Fault Lines

  • Martha Hall Kelly, Lilac Girls

  • Binnie Kirshenbaum, Hester among the Ruins

  • Julie Orringer, The Flight Portfolio

  • Leonardo Padura, Heretics (translated by Anna Kushner)

  • Jodi Picoult, The Storyteller

  • Charles Powers, In the Memory of the Forest

  • Saskia Sarginson, The Other Me

  • Rachel Seiffert, A Boy in Winter

  • Rachel Seiffert, The Dark Room

  • Helen Maryles Shankman, In the Land of Armadillos: Stories

  • B.A. Shapiro, The Muralist

  • Jim Shepard, The Book of Aron

  • Isaac Bashevis Singer, Scum

  • Isaac Bashevis Singer, Shosha: A Novel

  • Mark Slouka, The Visible World

  • Daniel Torday, The Last Flight of Poxl West

  • Roxanne Veletzos, The Girl They Left Behind

…about Polish (non-Jewish) culture and history

  • Jennifer Haigh, Baker Towers: A Novel

  • Keith Maillard, The Clarinet Polka

  • Eva Mekler, The Polish Woman

  • Bathsheba Monk, Now You See It: Stories from Cokesville, PA

NONFICTION

  • Masha Gessen, Ester and Ruzya

  • Jan T. Gross, Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland

  • Yisrael Gutman and Ezra Mendelsohn, The Jews of Poland between Two World Wars

  • Eva Hoffman, Shtetl

  • Jonathan Kaufman, A Hole in the Heart of the World: Being Jewish in Eastern Europe

  • Nora Krug, Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home

  • R.D. Rosen, Such Good Girls: The Journey of the Holocaust’s Hidden Child Survivors

  • Mary Fulbrook, A Small Town near Auschwitz: Ordinary Nazis and the Holocaust

  • Theo Richmond, Konin: A Quest

  • Louise Steinman, The Crooked Mirror

  • Christine Zamoyska-Panek, Have You Forgotten? A Memoir of Poland, 1939-1945

AND SOME MOVIES…

  • Aftermath (2012), director Wladyslaw Pasikowski

  • Disobedience: The Sousa Mendes Story (2009). Joel Santoni

  • Ida (2013), director Pawel Pawlikowski

  • The Pianist (2002), director Roman Polanski

  • Schindler’s List (1993), director Steven Spielberg