The Train to Warsaw

A Novel

by Gwen Edelman

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Pub Date Apr 01 2014 | Archive Date Sep 30 2014

Grove Atlantic | Grove Press

Description

Jascha and Lilka separately fled from the Warsaw Ghetto in 1942. Reunited years later, they live in London where Jascha has become a celebrated writer, feted for his dark tales about his war adventures. One day, forty years after the war, Jascha receives a letter inviting him to give a reading in Warsaw. He tells Lilka that nothing remains of the city they knew and that wild horses couldn’t drag him back. Nostalgic for the city of her childhood, Lilka prevails; together, traveling by train through a frozen December landscape, they return to the city of their past. When they unwittingly find themselves back in what was once the ghetto, they will discover that they still have secrets between them.

A riveting story of the nature of desire and the cost of survival, The Train to Warsaw is a haunting and unforgettable portrait of a man and a woman who cannot escape their past.

Jascha and Lilka separately fled from the Warsaw Ghetto in 1942. Reunited years later, they live in London where Jascha has become a celebrated writer, feted for his dark tales about his war...

Advance Praise

"Every exile dreams of the return home. Edelman’s intimate tale lets us eavesdrop on a couple’s return to Warsaw, traversing decades of conflict, betrayal, and secrecy—in war as in marriage. Love, it turns out may be the only country one ever has hopes of returning home to." —André Aciman, author of Out of Egypt: A Memoir

"An irresistible story told by two lovers. Ardent, fierce, shocking, and unforgettable. Gwen Edelman weaves the unthinkable into her gorgeous, tantalizing web." —Mary-Beth Hughes, author of Double Happiness

"Gwen Edelman's writing is so deceptively simple, so quietly poetic, that the torrents of emotion catches one by surprise and sweeps one away. The dialogue is stunningly real and the characters fully alive in this tender, unflinching tale of love that survives the unresolved—the irresolvable—traumas of life." —Michael Lavigne, author of The Wanting

"In this lyrical exploration of memory, there is more urgent sensuality and haunting desire than anything I've read in a long time. The Train to Warsaw kept me reading late into the night—saddened, aroused, angry and grateful." —Joanna Hershon, author of A Dual Inheritance

"Gwen Edelman’s spare, intimate narrative belies the sweeping devastation of what’s beneath: the alternating rage and despair of survival; and a desperate love that spans a lifetime. Edelman lays bare the tragedies of 1940s Warsaw in a series of dreamlike images all the more haunting because they’re drawn from history. I could not put it down. This is a fearless, achingly important work of fiction." —Jamie Quatro, author of I Want to Show You More

"The Train to Warsaw is a stunning novel exploring the enduring wounds of the Holocaust, but it is also a deeply truthful meditation on how we can never fully know each other, even after several decades of marriage. Jascha and Lilka’s search for a Warsaw that has disappeared is utterly compelling and affecting while Gwen Edelman’s sharp, spare prose equals Cynthia Ozick at her best and most resonant." —Allison Amend, author of A Nearly Perfect Copy