Книга Returning from Silence – Jenny′s Story
A novel that tells the story of a Jewish family in World War II and reaches deep into Jewish history.
Born in Brittany on the threshold of World War II, novelist Michèle Sarde had long been silent about her origins. After her mother, Jenny, finally shared their family history, Sarde decided to reconstruct Jenny’s journey, including her exile from Salonica, move to Paris in 1921, and assimilation in France. The Nazi occupation then forced her and her family to hide and conceal their Jewish identity, and in this retelling, Sarde shows how Jenny fights with everything she has to survive the Holocaust and protect her daughter.
Returning from Silence is a powerful saga that reaches deep into Jewish history, opening with the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 and their settlement in a more tolerant Ottoman Empire. Sephardi culture and language flourished in Salonica for four centuries, but with the fall of the Ottoman Empire in the 1920s, and the sense of troubling times to come, Jenny’s family felt impelled to leave their much-loved city and rebuild their lives in France. Their years in France led to change that none could have fully expected, and then, the Holocaust. The trauma lasts well into the post-war period, silencing both mother and daughter in unanticipated ways.
Through this family history, Sarde sensitively raises questions about identity, migration, and assimilation while weaving fiction together with history, research, and testimony to bring the characters’ stories to life.
"“The body of [Sarde’s] work is stunning in volume, quality, and diversity. . . . Her latest book, Returning from Silence. . . . unfolds the painful but liberating journey of being born at the beginning of World War II to a Jewish family in France, forced to hide throughout the Nazi persecutions. . . . Whenever a powerful and unforgettable story of survival of the Shoah emerges into the world in the form of an artistic product, it represents a victory over darkness and oblivion.”" - BOMB Magazine
"“In her riveting memoir, Sarde describes how the first immigrant Sephardim (Jews of Spanish origin) struggled to maintain their identity in the face of Christian pressure and unfamiliar Ashkenazi customs.”" - Washington Independent Review of Books
"“A touching account that combines fiction with research and memoir, Returning from Silence explores themes of immigration, assimilation, war, family ties, feminism, and religion. It begs the reader to consider questions of history and identity.”" - Jewish Book Council
"“A deftly crafted and inherently fascinating work of fact-based fiction, Returning from Silence by Michele Sarde is ably translated into English for an American readership by Swyer. An impressive, extraordinary, memorable work of Jewish literary fiction, Returning from Silence is an especially and unreservedly recommended addition to personal reading lists, as well as community, and academic library Literary Fiction collections.” " - Midwest Book Review
"Given the silence that had enshrouded these stories for much of Sarde’s life, every morsel, every family connection, took on the added importance of being a discovery. If the stories that Sarde persuaded her mother to tell at times seemed unremarkable, consider them nevertheless to be important literary artifacts. Memories of those lives that would have been erased without a trace were now, through Sarde’s efforts, resurrected.
" - San Diego Jewish World
"[…] in Returning from Silence Michèle Sarde shares with her audience a feminine, personalized, and very private account of the most tragic period in Jewish history. By combining her mother’s memoirs with her own experiences and with general historical knowledge, Sarde provides us with an exceptional opportunity to not only accept her interpretations, but also create our own reconstructions of complex historical processes and their impact on lives of concrete individuals." - Sephardic Horizons