Liquidation by Imre Kertész
"Liquidation" by Imre Kertész is a profound exploration of loss, identity, and the lingering effects of trauma in the wake of historical atrocities. Set against the backdrop of the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe, the narrative centers around a character referred to as B., a writer and Holocaust survivor who ultimately takes his own life. The story unfolds through the eyes of Kingbitter, a friend tasked with managing B.'s literary estate, who discovers a manuscript titled "Liquidation." This work serves as a reflection of B.'s personal struggles and the broader societal upheaval faced by those around him, including the decline of a state-owned publishing house.
As Kingbitter delves deeper into B.'s life and the implications of his death, he uncovers connections between their shared experiences, revealing a network of relationships fractured by trauma and disillusionment. Kertész's fragmented narrative style mirrors the chaos of a world shaped by the Holocaust and decades of Communist rule, highlighting the complexities of identity for those who have endured such histories. The novel resonates with themes of despair and the search for meaning amid incomprehensible loss, encapsulating the notion that the shadows of past atrocities continue to loom over contemporary existence.
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Liquidation by Imre Kertész
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of World Literature, Revised Edition
First published:Felszámolás, 2003 (English translation, 2004)
Type of work: Novel
The Work
This book is about the termination (or liquidation) of various things. About the time of the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe, B., also called Bee, is a well-known writer who was born in and survived the Nazis’ Auschwitz concentration camp in occupied Poland during World War II. He also lived through the Communist aftermath of the Holocaust. Now, however, he has committed suicide with a morphine overdose. The letter “B” and four numerals tattooed on his thigh, instead of his tiny arm when he was a baby, testifies to his origins.
Fellow workers come to his friend Kingbitter’s office to discuss B.’s literary affairs. Among the papers that Kingbitter has salvaged from Communist authorities is the manuscript of a play entitled Liquidation. As he reads the script to his colleagues at the office, Kingbitter is amazed at the prescient way in which B. foretells the personal and political crises that Kingbitter and B.’s other close friends now face. These include the liquidation of the bankrupt, state-owned publishing house—a remnant of the Communist era—where they work, which has been considering the publication of B.’s literary efforts. Because of these events and B.’s liquidation of his life, as well as the liquidation of his full-length manuscript (allegedly at B.’s orders to his girlfriend), and, more generally because of the liquidation of the art of literature in favor of dilettantism and ideological spin during Communism, the members of the group are left with a sense of lost identity, despair, and chaos to confront their moment in history.
Kingbitter, who is managing B.’s literary estate, is desperate to understand his friend’s suicide and searches for the longer manuscript (never found), of which the play, he believes, is a synopsis. In his search for the lost novel, he contacts Sarah, who was B.’s lover at the end of his life, and then Judit, B.’s former wife. Their marriage had broken up when B. told his spouse that because of Auschwitz she should not want him to father a child. His wife is driven to divorce him, since she does not want to see the world as a place filled with murderers but rather as a place where it is also possible to live.
Kingbitter, the consummate editor, tries to make sense out of B.’s life, personal and literary. Along the way, however, he finds that his friend’s life has in fact been more intimately linked to his own than he had realized. For example, Kingbitter now discovers that the two friends had been involved with their respective women. Another character of some note is Kürti, also employed by the publishing house, a cuckolded and embittered intellectual, who has similarly suffered from history’s cruelties. In short, the novel is about life’s losers.
Kertész seems to create a fragmented plot as a way to address the fate of those who have none following the Holocaust and four decades of Communist totalitarianism. There are few substantive answers and the seemingly incoherent organization of the work highlights that fact. The author restates one of the basic themes in most of his Holocaust writings, namely, that “Auschwitz has been hanging around the world since long ago, perhaps for centuries.” The play Liquidation lacks cohesion, as does the novel of the same name, because its fragmented construction is meant to reflect the incoherent chaos of the world. However, Kertész’s main theme echoes that of his earlier novels: The Holocaust is not inexplicable; rather, it is a given within which there are other givens.
Bibliography
Ehrenreich, Ben. “B.-ing There.” Review of Liquidation, by Imre Kertész. The Village Voice, December 22-28, 2004, p. C74.
Franklin, Ruth. “The Inhuman Condition.” Review of Liquidation, by Imre Kertész. The New York Times Book Review, December 19, 2004, p. 7.
Molnár, Sára. “Nobel in Literature 2002: Imre Kertész’s Aesthetics of the Holocaust.” CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 15, no. 1 (March, 2003).
Riding, Alan. “The Holocaust, from a Teenage View.” The New York Times, January 3, 2006, p. E1.
Riding, Alan. “Nobel for Hungarian Writer Who Survived Death Camps.” The New York Times, October 11, 2002, p. A1.
Riding, Alan. “Nobel Hero Insists Hungary Face Its Past.” The New York Times, December 4, 2002, p. E1.
Rosenbaum, Thane. “The Survivor Who Survived.” The New York Times, October 12, 2002, p. A21.