Shadow of Desolation

This intensely vivid and moving book makes a fine contribution to the burgeoning literature of Australian Jewish autobiography. There are currently about 200 such titles. They vary enormously in standard and kind – from small print run, self-published chronicles written for authors’ families, to the work of high-profile professional writers such as Lily Brett, Morris Lurie and Arnold Zable. These narratives spring from all manner of Jewish backgrounds, including ‘Anglo-Jews’, whose families had been long settled in Australia prior to the Holocaust, and central and eastern European Jews, who lived through the annihilation - in camps, in hiding, in disguise - and settled here after World War II. The majority of life writing by Australian Jews can loosely be classified as Holocaust memoir (‘loosely’ because many survivors resent being seen as merely that, and write in detail about various phases of their lives). The most sophisticated ‘literary’ examples of this sub-genre generally come from second-generation writers, who have had more sustained secular educations than their parents, closer acquaintance with the English language, and more time to write and reflect than was available to the older, refugee generation.