Plunder
Menachem Kaiser
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From the publisher
‘Menachem Kaiser is a young writer and storyteller of stunning talent, originality, and wisdom, and his debut book is gloriously impossible to categorise — by turns hilarious and profound, digressive and suspenseful, intimate and sweeping, it stands as an enviable accomplishment.’ GIDEON LEWIS-KRAUS, AUTHOR OF A SENSE OF DIRECTION: PILGRIMAGE FOR THE RESTLESS AND HOPEFUL
An unputdownable tale of one man’s quest to recover his family’s property, plundered by the Nazis.
Menachem Kaiser’s brilliantly told story is set in motion when the author takes up his Holocaust-survivor grandfather’s former battle to reclaim the family’s property in Sosnowiec, Poland. Here, he meets a Polish lawyer known as ‘The Killer’ who agrees to take his case and becomes involved with a band of Silesian treasure-seekers, all the while piecing together his family’s complex history.
Propelled by rich, original research, Kaiser immerses readers in profound questions that reach far beyond his personal quest. What does it mean to seize your own legacy? Can reclaimed property repair rifts among the living?
Plunder is both a deeply immersive adventure story and an irreverent, daring interrogation of inheritance — material, spiritual, familial, and emotional.
‘Reparations and treasure hunting: I can’t think of two better metaphors for memoir writing, and I can’t think of a better recent memoir than Menachem Kaiser’s Plunder, which has heart, humour, and intelligence to spare.’ JOSHUA COHEN, AUTHOR OF ATTENTION: DISPATCHES FROM A LAND OF DISTRACTION
‘A saga of family history and inheritance that reads like a murder mystery, Plunder begins with Menachem Kaiser’s journey to reclaim a Polish apartment building but immediately becomes something far richer and stranger. Probing with unusual insight and humour into questions of memory, loss, and what we owe to the past, this impossible-to-put-down book — part travelogue, part memoir, part meditation on all that history hides from us — marks the debut of a major writer.’ RUTH FRANKLIN, AUTHOR OF NBCC AWARD-WINNING SHIRLEY JACKSON: A RATHER HAUNTED LIFE