An Interrupted Life: The Diaries of Etty Hillesum

Persephone book No. 5

For the first time, Etty Hillesum's diary and letters appear together to give us the fullest possible portrait of this extraordinary woman in the midst of World War II.

In the darkest years of Nazi occupation and genocide, Etty Hillesum remained a celebrant of life whose lucid intelligence, sympathy, and almost impossible gallantry were themselves a form of inner resistance. The adult counterpart to Anne Frank, Hillesum testifies to the possibility of awareness and compassion in the face of the most devastating challenge to one's humanity. She died at Auschwitz in 1943 at the age of twenty-nine.

Etty Hillesum (1914–43) lived in Amsterdam, like Anne Frank, and like her she kept a diary. 'All the writings she left behind,' writes Eva Hoffman in her Preface to this edition of her diaries and letters, 'were composed in the shadow of the Holocaust, but they resist being read primarily in its dark light. Rather, their abiding interest lies in the light- filled mind that pervades them and in the astonishing internal journey they chart. Etty's pilgrimage grew out of the intimate experience of an intellectual young woman - it was idiosyncratic, individual, and recognisably modern... The private person who revealed herself in her diary was impassioned, erotically volatile, restless... Yet she had the kind of genius for introspection that converts symptoms into significance and joins self-examination to philosophical investigation... In the last stages of her amazing and moving journey, Etty seemed to attain that peace which passeth understanding... Finally, however, the violence and brutality she saw all around her overwhelmed even her capacity to understand... But by knowing and feeling so deeply and fully, an unknown young woman became one of the most exceptional and truest witnesses of the devastation through which she lived.'

REVIEWS

"Rarely have I read anything as vivid, passionate and truthful to the ordinary depth of human experience – and this is my second time reading these intense diaries. Their fresh power remains astonishing" - a review from a reader in Amazon

“Remarkable . . . What made life meaningful to Etty was the rare combination of erotic, spiritual, and intellectual passions that made up her 'thinking heart.' A truly great book.” ―The Washington Post Book World

PRODUCT DETAILS
Paperback with flaps
Publisher: Persephone Books
ISBN: 978-0953478057 
Pages: 464
Endpaper: The fabric, by Otti Berger (d. Auschwitz 1944), a Bauhaus designer living in Holland, could have been Etty's bedspread; the stripes running across the muted, if cheerful, pattern have the effect of barbed-wire.