The Man Who Never Stopped Sleeping

Award-winning Israeli author Appelfeld (Suddenly Love) offers a fictional account of his experiences as a young Holocaust survivor who has made his way from war-torn Europe to preindependence Israel. Apparently modeled on the author, the protagonist is the sleeping man of the title, who barely recalls his escape from the Nazi genocide because he slept through most of it. He is carried from the camps after liberation and brought to Italy, where other young men in his situation are trained to become citizens of their future homeland by working the land and learning to bear arms. As our protagonist spends more of his time awake, he has frequent flashbacks to real and imagined conversations with his parents, especially with his mother. We do not learn what happened to his parents during the war or whether they survived. The most intriguing parts of the novel are the young man's coming alive again, bonding with his comrades, and learning to begin a new life.