The Memory Man

I just read the 2005 Holocaust Literature award-winning book, "The Memory Man", by Lisa Appignanesi. It's a story about Professor Bruno Lind, a Viennese Jew by descent who fled and lived overseas during the horrific Holocaust years and now an aged but accomplished neuroscientist of international fame. Lind takes up an offer to speak at a technical seminar in Vienna, where he gets to know journalist Irena Davies, whose mother Marta is suffering from Alzheimer's, and Krakow pharmacologist Aleksander Tarski, whose very name sends Lind's mind reeling and stirring up his long-forgotten memories. Urged on by his adopted daughter, Amelia, Lind then travels to Poland, where he is seized by haunting recollections of his past: his family forced into hiding and torn apart by the merciless enslaught of racial and religious prejudice as Nazi influence swept across Central Europe, his family's struggle to survive and fight back, and the brutality and senselessness of their eventual massacre. What started out, for me, as a dry book peppered with neuro-psycho-philosophical jargon gradually evolved into a tale of wartime courage, sacrifice and love, and of hope placed, misplaced and found again. This novel is definitely worth a read.