Pawnbroker, The
(Edward Lewis Wallant)
After surviving the horrors of a Nazi concentration camp and gaining his freedom, Sol Nazerman opens a pawnshop in a rough section of Harlem in New York City. His wife and son were brutally murdered in the camp while Sol watched helplessly and he lives in a state of numbness having lost all faith in himself and the rest of humanity. The first part of the book focuses intently on Sol?s painful memories and bleak existence. Four people in Sol?s world begin to reach him and chip away at his isolation. They are Morton, his nephew, Albert, a hoodlum that Sol launders money for, Marilyn, a good-hearted charity worker, and Jesus Ortiz, his scheming assistant. Gradually Sol begins to recover his humanity and desire to interact and help people. Wallant?s descriptive style of writing brings dimension to all the secondary characters and the effect they have on Sol?s world. The Pawnbroker is an optimistic novel despite its dark setting and is effective in showing how people are able to overcome adversity. This book has been compared favorably with Schindler?s List as a stark portrait of the holocaust and it?s survivors.
Edward Lewis Wallant was born in 1926. He is best known for his writings about the holocaust. His other works include The Human Season and The Tenants of Moonbloom. He died in 1962 only a year after writing this book at the young age of thirty-six. After his death The Pawnbroker was made into a highly acclaimed motion picture starring Rod Steiger and has the distinction of being the first American movie to show a woman naked from the waist up. This ruffled more than a few feathers, given the times, and ultimately added to the success of the film, as controversy is apt to do.
Resumos Relacionados
- Night
- Night
- If This Is A Man / Survival In Auschwitz
- Eye Of The Beholder
- Dante's Equation
|
|
