Poetic, witty, and ever so faintly surreal, Sefer delicatelyexplores the legacy of the Holocaust for the postwar generation, ageneration for whom a devastating history has grown distant, bothtemporally and emotionally. The novel’s protagonist, Jan Sefer,is a psychotherapist living in Vienna—someone whose professionallife puts him in daily contact with the traumas of others but who hasfound it difficult to address his own family background, especially hismemories of his father. With its fragmentary structure and itspreference for hints rather than explanations, the novel belongs to therealm of the postmodern, while it also incorporates subtle elements ofmagical realism.