More praise for The Morning Star by Andre Schwarz-Bart came into our inbox this morning from Library Journal--always a great way for someone in publishing to greet the day. There have been some changes to the cover art and the pub date, but it will be in stores in November, and the stunning cover you see with this post is its final version. Questions? Review copy requests? Contact us here.Here's the full review from Library Journal.
Schwarz-Bart’s debut, The Last of the Just (1959), is regarded as one of the great works of contemporary Jewish literature. Fifty years later and four years after his death, a bookend to that novel appears, patched together from the author’s manuscripts by his widow, Simone. Like the earlier novel, this is an intensely personal tale of the Holocaust that stands apart from other works of its type in its distinctive approach. Combining fact, myth, folktale, and fantasy, the plot spans several thousand years, from a small Polish village in the late 19th century to the year 3000 in another solar system. At its heart is a simple and powerful story of a flute-playing cobbler’s son who loses his family but survives both the Warsaw ghetto and the extermination camp at Auschwitz. VERDICT: Schwarz-Bart’s harmonious prose stirs the emotions as he considers the unfathomable darkness of the human soul and the brightness of the morning that will always follow. A moving and illuminating read in its own right, his final novel serves as a fitting coda to one of the past century’s most striking literary careers.--Forest Turner, Suffolk Cty. House of Correction Lib., Boston
