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Book Description
A moving and topical love story about a young woman who seeks to unravel the mysteries of her grandparents' tragic decision.
Product Description
One Sunday morning in October, István and his wife Vera start their day as usual. They tidy their house; Vera makes a festive cake to put in the freezer and cuts fresh roses for a vase in the living room. That evening, after nearly fifty years of marriage, they lie down in the bed that they share and take their own lives. Having survived the tumult of twentieth-century Europe and after raising a family together, they could not accept the words 'until death do us part'.
Vera and István met at a recital in Budapest in 1940, and from that moment Vera knew that he was the man she would marry. A deep and abiding friendship grew between them. While sifting through the fragments of the family history in an attempt to understand this glamorous and enigmatic couple, their granddaughter Johanna Adorján imagines their final day. Amid the family stories and portraits by friends, she dares to give voice to their never-mentioned experiences in the Holocaust and their escape from Hungary during the uprising of 1956.
An Exclusive Love is both a love story and a journey of self-understanding, beautifully told and shot through with tender humour. It is a history at once personal and universal, a tale of memory, belonging and devotion.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Johanna Adorjan, a German writer, has written the story of her grandparents' double suicide in Copenhagen in 1991.
Though she wasn't there, she writes as she envisions the Sunday of the suicide unfolding. Interspersed with the day's events, Adorjan tells the story of her grandparents - their lives together from Hungarian Jews who survived both the Holocaust and the communist government of post WW2 Hungary to their lives in Denmark, where they had fled during the 1956 Hungarian uprising. By 1990, her grandfather was in very bad health and the couple decided to end their lives together.
The Adorjans - Vera and Istvan - had met and married in Budapest in 1942. He was an orthopaedic surgeon some 11 years older than his wife. After the German invasion of Hungary in 1944, Istvan was sent to a labor camp - ending up in Mauthausan concentration camp in Austria and Vera went into hiding with their young son. They found each other after the war and both joined the Hungarian Communist party, reaping the economic benefits of party membership, until their flight to the West in 1956.
Who were Vera and Istvan Adorjan? Istvan's father had changed the family name from Adler to the more Hungarian Adorjan. Both came from Jewish families but Vera became a non-observant Christian, along with her two children, being baptised as a Protestant after WW2. Istvan never converted but, having come from a secular Jewish family, never practiced his religion.
They were almost chameleons, people who adopted the language, religion, and politics of the places they lived in their long lives. Johanna - their granddaughter - set off 18 years after their joint suicide to reconstruct her grandparents' lives, by visiting the places they lived and talking to their surviving friends and relatives. What she finds out about them - and herself and HER identity - is the subject of this well-written and well-translated small memoir.
Though she wasn't there, she writes as she envisions the Sunday of the suicide unfolding. Interspersed with the day's events, Adorjan tells the story of her grandparents - their lives together from Hungarian Jews who survived both the Holocaust and the communist government of post WW2 Hungary to their lives in Denmark, where they had fled during the 1956 Hungarian uprising. By 1990, her grandfather was in very bad health and the couple decided to end their lives together.
The Adorjans - Vera and Istvan - had met and married in Budapest in 1942. He was an orthopaedic surgeon some 11 years older than his wife. After the German invasion of Hungary in 1944, Istvan was sent to a labor camp - ending up in Mauthausan concentration camp in Austria and Vera went into hiding with their young son. They found each other after the war and both joined the Hungarian Communist party, reaping the economic benefits of party membership, until their flight to the West in 1956.
Who were Vera and Istvan Adorjan? Istvan's father had changed the family name from Adler to the more Hungarian Adorjan. Both came from Jewish families but Vera became a non-observant Christian, along with her two children, being baptised as a Protestant after WW2. Istvan never converted but, having come from a secular Jewish family, never practiced his religion.
They were almost chameleons, people who adopted the language, religion, and politics of the places they lived in their long lives. Johanna - their granddaughter - set off 18 years after their joint suicide to reconstruct her grandparents' lives, by visiting the places they lived and talking to their surviving friends and relatives. What she finds out about them - and herself and HER identity - is the subject of this well-written and well-translated small memoir.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
3 reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Two lovers who died together...
4 Feb 2011
Johanna Adorjan, a German writer, has written the story of her grandparents' double suicide in Copenhagen in 1991.
Though she wasn't there, she writes as she envisions the Sunday of the suicide unfolding. Interspersed with the day's events, Adorjan tells the story of her grandparents - their lives together from Hungarian Jews who survived both the Holocaust and the communist government of post WW2 Hungary to their lives in Denmark, where they had fled during the 1956 Hungarian uprising. By 1990, her grandfather was in very bad health and the couple decided to end their lives together.
The Adorjans - Vera and Istvan - had met and married in Budapest in 1942. He was an orthopaedic surgeon some 11 years older than his wife. After the German invasion of Hungary in 1944, Istvan was sent to a labor camp - ending up in Mauthausan concentration camp in Austria and Vera went into hiding with their young son. They found each other after the war and both joined the Hungarian Communist party, reaping the economic benefits of party membership, until their flight to the West in 1956.
Who were Vera and Istvan Adorjan? Istvan's father had changed the family name from Adler to the more Hungarian Adorjan. Both came from Jewish families but Vera became a non-observant Christian, along with her two children, being baptised as a Protestant after WW2. Istvan never converted but, having come from a secular Jewish family, never practiced his religion.
They were almost chameleons, people who adopted the language, religion, and politics of the places they lived in their long lives. Johanna - their granddaughter - set off 18 years after their joint suicide to reconstruct her grandparents' lives, by visiting the places they lived and talking to their surviving friends and relatives. What she finds out about them - and herself and HER identity - is the subject of this well-written and well-translated small memoir.
Though she wasn't there, she writes as she envisions the Sunday of the suicide unfolding. Interspersed with the day's events, Adorjan tells the story of her grandparents - their lives together from Hungarian Jews who survived both the Holocaust and the communist government of post WW2 Hungary to their lives in Denmark, where they had fled during the 1956 Hungarian uprising. By 1990, her grandfather was in very bad health and the couple decided to end their lives together.
The Adorjans - Vera and Istvan - had met and married in Budapest in 1942. He was an orthopaedic surgeon some 11 years older than his wife. After the German invasion of Hungary in 1944, Istvan was sent to a labor camp - ending up in Mauthausan concentration camp in Austria and Vera went into hiding with their young son. They found each other after the war and both joined the Hungarian Communist party, reaping the economic benefits of party membership, until their flight to the West in 1956.
Who were Vera and Istvan Adorjan? Istvan's father had changed the family name from Adler to the more Hungarian Adorjan. Both came from Jewish families but Vera became a non-observant Christian, along with her two children, being baptised as a Protestant after WW2. Istvan never converted but, having come from a secular Jewish family, never practiced his religion.
They were almost chameleons, people who adopted the language, religion, and politics of the places they lived in their long lives. Johanna - their granddaughter - set off 18 years after their joint suicide to reconstruct her grandparents' lives, by visiting the places they lived and talking to their surviving friends and relatives. What she finds out about them - and herself and HER identity - is the subject of this well-written and well-translated small memoir.
Gorgeous story, construction, prose.
11 July 2011
Johanna Adorjan has crafted a masterful piece of art that far exceeds the vast majority of memoirs I have read in terms of its enjoyability, honesty and cleverness. The structure of the book is simple - two weaving plot lines, one real, one imagined - but she so carefully knits them together that it is difficult to distinguish fact from fiction. Her careful research and consideration lends an authenticity to her imagined scenarios that brings both of her grandparents to life, and it is so rare to find such genuine, clean prose. I would highly recommend this book to any reader or writer.
A Poignant Family Memoir
15 Jun 2011
Johanna Adorjan's memoir is not limited to just one family's story, it opens up discussion of a much greater scope: suicide among Holocaust survivors and European Jewish identity and assimilation before and after the war. Adorjan writes with remarkable clarity about a personal and tragic family history, without allowing sentimentality to get in her way.
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