A novel describing the life of a Jewish store owner struggling in a small German town between the wars ( )

Written when the author was only twenty-three and published in 1933, Life Goes On is an autobiographical novel that is in part a depiction of Keilson's father and in part a commentary on the post-WWI years and the generation that grew up during 1920's Germany.

Seldersen the shopkeeper had never in his life wanted anything to do with people whose heads seemed to be bursting with big, boundless ideas. What he needed was right there next to him, in arm's reach at all times; his type is absorbed in everyday life, and he always kept his air of calm mastery, not without a certain restraint and reserve. He was a whole man, and behind him stood a whole age. He was past fifty by that time and his life up until then had been nothing but one long struggle... He had survived the war on the front lines unharmed, even if those four years seemed like ten... His wife had run the business during those four years, while raising two children. Despite how hard she tried, Herr Seldersen had found nothing but ruins when he came back: shelves empty, customers gone, a distressing outlook all in all...

He lost all his money in the inflation and this time had to struggle hard to barely get back on his feet... But he made enough to get by and was satisfied. So times were tough and there were signs of even more serious problems ahead—you just had to be a man and shoulder whatever burden there was. But there was no getting around old age.

Albrecht is still a boy in school when the novel opens, and his ideas about his country, manhood, and intellectual life are in development. He watches, almost as a disinterested third party, as his father struggles to keep the store going in a worsening economic climate and faces the end of his dreams of an easy retirement. As Albrecht gets older, he starts to make his own decisions about the right way to face the inflation, labor unrest, and despair that grows steadily around him and pulls his generation into its grip.

This is not a cheerful book, and from the first page, you know things are only going to get worse. But no one knew how much worse, not even the author. The Nazis banned his book in 1934 and later forced him to emigrate. He ended up in the Netherlands, joined the Dutch Resistance, and became a Dutch citizen. He would spend his life helping treat children traumatized by war. His parents, the shopkeepers immortalized in this debut novel, were murdered at Auschwitz. Keilson would go on to write two more critically acclaimed novels, [The Death of the Adversary] and [Comedy in a Minor Key], but at the age of 100, Keilson approached The New York Times and said he would love to see his first novel reissued and translated. I would recommend this novel for those interested in Keilson's life and a somewhat dry, but true depiction of life in interwar Germany. ( )