Nine suitcases - Bla Zsolt

Originally published in weekly instalments, Nine Suitcases is the Hungarian writer Bla Zsolt's harrowing memoir of his experiences in the ghetto of Nagyvarad and as a forced labourer in the Ukraine. Written with exceptional freshness and a devastating blend of angry despair and cool detachment, Zsolt - one of the earliest writers on the Holocaust - provides not only a rare insight into Hungarian fascism, but a shocking exposure of the cruelty, indifference, selfishness, cowardice and betrayal of which human beings - the victims no less than the perpetrators - are capable in extreme circumstances. Interspersed with moments of grotesque farce, grim irony and occasional memories of human kindness, Zsolt's nightmarish but meticulously realistic chronicle of smaller and larger crimes against humanity is as riveting as it is horrifying.