Following two distinctive and critically praised short story collections, Like You'd Understand, Anyway and You Think That's Bad, Jim Shepard has written a novel for the first time in a decade. In The Book of Aron, he imagines the early years of the Warsaw Ghetto through the eyes of an adolescent whose life intersects with that of Janusz Korczak, the real-life doctor whose struggle to save the lives of some 200 children in his orphanage was one of World War II's great tales of heroism. Perfectly channeling the artless voice of his young narrator, and with impressive restraint, Shepard gives readers a glimpse of the nightmare world of Warsaw's Jews.
Aron Różycki has just celebrated his 10th birthday when the Germans invade Poland, and it's only a few months before the Nazis construct the walled quarter into which they herd the city's Jews. After his father and brother are transported to a labor camp and his mother dies, Aron lands on Korczak's doorstep.
Shepard makes no attempt to exaggerate the terror and bewilderment of the children under Korczak's care. The ones who don't starve succumb to typhus, spread by the lice that infest everyone. Aron accompanies an ailing Korczak on daily trips through the ghetto's streets, begging and bartering for scraps of food. But through all this, as Shepard shows with profound compassion, the doctor's love nourished his charges as much as any physical sustenance. The Book of Aron ennobles unimaginable suffering through the gift of art. --Harvey Freedenberg, attorney and freelance reviewer