"It was almost dark when he got back with his shopping, and so he switched on the light in the hall. His shadow appeared, and before he could summon up the courage to turn round and look at the door, his shadow rushed at the letter box and back into the room."

Thus begins Mr. Theordore Mundstock, a novel of the Holocaust from a perspective I've not read before, that of the psychology of Jews whose lives were suspended between fear and false hope during the early stages of Nazi occupation.

Theodore Mundstock is an elderly Jew living under the Nazi occupation of Prague during World War II. He and other Jews are aware of the ongoing deportations, and live in daily fear of being summonsed. Yet they also seek confirmation that rumors of the worst are not true. People react in different ways, some go into hiding, some commit suicide. Mr. Mundstock decides to prepare himself mentally and physically for deportation and life in a concentration camp, so that he can survive. He does this by creating a pseudo-camp in his apartment--no heat, he sleeps on a plank, he tortures himself with hunger. The novel is at times hallucinatory--he frequently consults with his shadow, and his life in his imagined concentration camp is psychically devastating. We experience his mental deterioration, and ultimate death, before the actualities occur.

Highly recommended. ( )