Shelf Unbound October/November 2013 October 2013

on our shelf OPERATION MASSACRE O DAYS IN THE HISTORY OF SILENCE W inner of the Norwegian Critics Prize for Literature and the Nordic Council Literature Prize, Days in the History of Silence finds an elderly couple struggling with secrets long held from their three daughters—he, that he is Jewish and escaped the Holocaust; she, that as a teen she gave up a son for adoption. The husband has retreated into silence, the wife into memories. A quiet, deep, precisely written novel. —Anna Nair Days in the History of Silence by Merethe Lindstrøm, translated from the Norwegian by Anne Bruce, Other Press 2013, www.otherpress.com. 62 OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2013 n June 9, 1956, 12 working-class men gathered at a Buenos Aires home were seized by police, taken to a field, and shot. Six months later, writer Rodolfo Walsh learned there were survivors and began investigating the story, which had not been covered in the media. The result, Walsh’s 1957 classic Operation Massacre, reads like a crime novel and, as Ricardo Piglia writes in the afterword, “elevates the raw truth of the facts.” —Ben Minton Operation Massacre by Rodolfo Walsh, translated by Daniella Gitlin, Seven Stories Press 2013, www.sevenstories.com. L’AMOUR L ’Amour is a spare, poetic wisp of a novel in which three unnamed characters drift in and out of cryptic exchanges and ?????????)Q?????????????????????)????????????????????)?????????????????????)???????????????????????????)???????? ??????????????)????????????????????%????)????????????????????????Q?)??????????????????????+?Q5????? ??)3?e???????5?????????)??????????????????????)-??????????1?????5??????)=????1???? ????????)????????????????((0

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