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Late Soviet stagnation, Moscow. Alyosha - a writer who suffers from fits accompanied by memory loss - admits himself to a psychiatric institute for experimental treatment. Inspired by Ivan the Terrible’s “Memorial Book of the Disgraced” and his own spiritual crisis, Alyosha has been trying to record the memories of people in his life who "died before their time, leaving nothing behind except in my...

At the Mercy of Strangers is an important addition to Holocaust literature for a number of reasons. It is a document about the survival of one individual and her two children. As a first hand account about survival during the Holocaust, it offers unique insight. It also documents how Polish friends, acquaintances and even strangers helped to ensure the survival of one Jewish family during the bleak...

The direct impulse for the undertaking was the experience of scientific work and exchange during the COVID-19 pandemic as a first-hand touch of the “poetics of disappearance” (p. 16). It is, needless to say, an experience with which the writer of these words deeply sympathizes, as most of the people nowadays probably do. Therefore, the book can claim a wide appeal, resulting not only from...