Chasing the King of Hearts

by Hanna Krall, Philip Boehm (Translator)

An extraordinary love story, spanning 60 years, from 1939 to 2000, from the Warsaw Ghetto to Israel.

'This is the last leg of my journey. It would be silly to lose my mind now. 'After the deportation of her husband to Auschwitz, Izolda Regenberg, alias Maria Pawlicka, has only one aim: to free her husband. Her race to beat fate might appear absurd to others, but not to her. In times of war and destruction she learns to trust herself.

Why Peirene chose to publish this book:

'This is a beautiful love story. A story which makes one weep for mankind. While Hanna Krall's terse prose is designed to convey the utter desperation of war, her deft touch evokes hope and a sense of homecoming.' Meike Ziervogel

Genres: Fiction, Poland, Historical Fiction, Holocaust, World War II, War, Polish Literature

176 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Urodziła się w Warszawie w rodzinie żydowskiej. Podczas II wojny światowej zginęło wielu członków jej najbliższej rodziny. Wojnę przeżyła tylko dlatego, że była ukrywana przed Niemcami. Cudem została ocalona w czasie transportu do getta. Holocaust i losy Żydów polskich z czasem stały się głównym tematem jej twórczości.

Od 1955 r. pracowała w redakcji "Życia Warszawy", od 1966 r. w "Polityce", której korespondentem w ZSRR była w latach 1966-1969. Reportaże z ZSRR wydała w tomie Na wschód od Arbatu.W latach 1982-1987 była zastępcą kierownika literackiego Zespołu Filmowego "Tor". Na początku lat 90. związała się z Gazetą Wyborczą.

Światową sławę przyniósł jej oryginalny w formie wywiad z Markiem Edelmanem Zdążyć przed Panem Bogiem (1977). Ostatnie zbiory reportaży to m.in. Trudności ze wstawaniem (1990), Taniec na cudzym weselu (1994), Dowody na istnienie (1996), Tam już nie ma żadnej rzeki (1998), To ty jesteś Daniel (2001). Cztery ostatnie w 2007 r. zebrała w książce Żal. Jest także autorką minipowieści: Okna, Sublokatorka, Wyjątkowo długa linia, Król Kier znów na wylocie.

Jej teksty były podstawą scenariuszy filmów Krótki dzień pracy Krzysztofa Kieślowskiego i Daleko od okna Jana Jakuba Kolskiego.

W 1999 r. otrzymała Nagrodę Wielką Fundacji Kultury, jedno z najbardziej prestiżowych wyróżnień przyznawanych w Polsce. Jej twórczość przetłumaczono na wiele języków. Jest członkiem Stowarzyszenia Pisarzy Polskich.

W 2005 r. została nominowana do Nagrody NIKE za książkę Wyjątkowo długa linia. Jej książka "Król Kier znów na wylocie" w 2007 roku została nominowana do Literackiej Nagrody Środkowoeuropejskiej Angelus. W tym samym roku okazał się wywiad - rzeka pt. "Reporterka. Rozmowy z Hanną Krall" Jacka Antczaka i książka pt. "Żal" zawierająca reportaże z pięciu poprzednich zbiorów. W 2008 "Król kier znów na wylocie" został uznany w plebiscycie księgarzy, czytelników i bibliotekarzy za Książkę Roku 2006.

Dzieła

* Na wschód od Arbatu, Iskry, Warszawa 1972
* Zdążyć przed Panem Bogiem, Wydawnictwo Literackie, Kraków 1977
* Sześć odcieni bieli, Czytelnik, Warszawa 1978
* Sublokatorka, Libella, Paryż 1985, Kraków 1985 (pierwszy przedruk w drugim obiegu)
* Okna, Aneks, Londyn 1987, Warszawa 1987 (przedruk w drugim obiegu)
* Trudności ze wstawaniem, Warszawa 1988 (w drugim obiegu). Wydanie oficjalne (łącznie z powieścią Okna), Alfa, Warszawa 1990
* Hipnoza, Alfa, Warszawa 1989
* Taniec na cudzym weselu, BGW, Warszawa 1993
* Co się stało z naszą bajką [opowieść dla dzieci], Twój Styl, Warszawa 1994
* Dowody na istnienie, Wydawnictwo a5, Poznań 1995
* Tam już nie ma żadnej rzeki, Wydawnictwo a5, Kraków 1998
* To ty jesteś Daniel, Wydawnictwo a5, Kraków 2001
* Wyjątkowo długa linia, Wydawnictwo a5, Kraków 2004
* Spokojne niedzielne popołudnie, Wydawnictwo a5, Kraków 2004
* Król kier znów na wylocie, Świat Książki, Warszawa 2006
* Żal, Świat Książki, Warszawa 2007
* Różowe strusie pióra, Świat Książki, Warszawa 2009
* Synapsy Marii H., Wydawnictwo Literackie, Kraków 2020
* Jedenaście. Wydawnictwo a5, Kraków 2024

Reviews

[Ilse · Rating 3 out of 5]

In Chasing the King of Hearts Polish journalist and novelist Hanna Krall records the astonishing life story of Izolda Regensberg, a Polish-Jewish woman who against all odds will survive the Holocaust – according to Izolda only because she was driven by the urge to find and save her husband Shayek (the ‘King of Hearts’ from the title). He has been deported from Krakow to Auschwitz, eventually transferred to Ebensee, a subcamp of Mauthausen.

In brief vignettes, Hanna Krall sketches Izolda’s life, mostly following her during the war through Poland, Austria and Germany. The fragments during the war are interspersed with short intermezzo’s on Izolda’s life at old age in Israel, contemplating the events in the past and commemorating friends and relatives that perished in the Shoah. It is hard for her to share her experiences with the new generation as she is not able to communicate with them, her granddaughters do not speak Polish and Izolda’s knowledge of Hebrew is poor.

From the beginning ,the reader learns that Izolda’s singlemindedness will be rewarded, but that trauma and survival guilt will continue to haunt her life after the war. As documented in many survivors stories, she has to find an answer to the troubling questions how to reconstruct a viable life after surviving, how to relate to her regained identity, how to live with the feelings of guilt for surviving and lettering down family members and friends who didn’t survive the horror.

While friends and relatives flee, take their own lives or disappear in Nacht und Nebel one after the other, Izolda takes on the identity and name of a Polish woman, dyes her hair, camouflages her Jewishness, wearing a scapular of the Madonna to protect her. She manages to escape from the Warsaw ghetto, when she is sent to a work camp escapes it too. Offering her services as a nurse she manages to be transferred to another camp when ending up in Auschwitz; in her quest for her husband people both help her and take advantage of her, she is raped, gets in touch with the resistance and is imprisoned and tortured by the Gestapo in Vienna – where her exposure as a Jew at least temporarily saves her life: as not involved in the resistance, there won’t follow immediate death for her by the firing squad. Because she is a Jewish woman she is innocent and so she is sent off from prison to die in Auschwitz…

By the end of the war, in Berlin, she disguises as a German nurse, working in a military hospital looking after wounded SS and Wehrmacht soldiers. . Her determination also implies that she does anything it takes to survive, including turning away when she spots her mother-in-law among a group of prisoners that will be shot, avoiding eye-contact not to give herself away – or not intervening when others need help not to endanger her own survival and mission.


(Suppression of Warsaw Ghetto Uprising - Captured Jews are led by German Waffen SS soldiers to the assembly point for deportation (Umschlagplatz)

Hanna Krall herself describes this book somewhat wryly as a ‘holocaust romance’, as the story of Izolda and Shayek is not a schmaltzy love story at all. This is not a ‘Happily Ever After’ love story, nor is it merely a story of exceptional heroism. Krall shows poignantly that the focus, cleverness and will power of Izolda cannot be separated from the role chance played in her survival: it is the succession of small decisions and events which turn out lucky which make plain that it is the survival as such which is exceptional, enabling Izolda, as one of the few who slipped through the net the Nazi threw over the Jews, to share her story. The prominent role of accidentalness, the numerous lucky strikes making Izolda survive where other didn’t, seem to me the gist of Krall’s narrative: survival, even if not altogether random, was in some respects a matter of sheer coincidence, which again reminded me of the well-known poem Any Case by Wislawa Szymborska:

It could have happened.
It had to happen.
It happened earlier. Later.
Nearer. Farther off.
It happened, but not to you.

You were saved because you were the first.
You were saved because you were the last.
Alone. With others.
On the right. On the left.
Because it was raining. Because of the shade.
Because the day was sunny.

You were in luck - there was a forest.
You were in luck - there were no trees.
You were in luck - a rake, a hook, a beam, a brake,
a jam, a turn, a quarter inch, an instant.
You were in luck - just then a straw went floating by.

As a result, because, although, despite.
What would have happened if a hand, a foot,
within an inch, a hairsbreadth from
an unfortunate coincidence

So you're here? Still dizzy from another dodge, close shave,
reprieve?
One hole in the net and you slipped through?
I couldn't be more shocked or speechless.
Listen,
how your heart pounds inside of me.

(Translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh)

Recurrently, looking back, Krall sharply exemplifies that accidentalness in Izolda’s case:

If they hadn’t taken her for a prostitute, she wouldn’t have stopped in on Mateusz the caretaker, she wouldn’t have learnt about Mauthausen, she wouldn’t have travelled to Vienna.

If she hadn’t gone to Vienna, she would have stayed in Warsaw. She would have died in the uprising, in the basement, together with her mother.

If she hadn’t escaped from Guben, they would have sent her on with the other women. She would have landed at Bergen-Belsen, in the middle of a typhus epidemic. She would have died of typhus together with Janka Tempelhof. Evidently God had decided she was meant to survive this war.

Or not. He had decided that she was meant to die and she opposed His verdict with all her strength. That’s the only reason she survived. And no God can claim credit. It was her doing and hers alone.


(View of a major street in Krakow after the liquidation of the ghetto, which is strewn with the bundles of deported Jews)

Krall tells Izolda’s story in matter-of-fact, austere prose, showing or suggesting the horror in a detached way, shedding a light on why she precisely wrote this story down: it was Izolda’s search for a writer to tell her story which she thought worth filming. Krall words Izolda’s disappointment when she discovers Krall took much of the tears, the love, the heart out of her story. Krall choses to show Izolda in her naked survival modus, as she cannot afford to dwell on her thoughts and emotions – which results in a powerful testimony of a Holocaust survivor, as told by another Holocaust survivor.

Holocaust narratives, at least fictional ones, ever strike me as infinitely delicate. Can fiction contribute anything on this theme? Survivors like Aharon Appelfeld and Imre Kertesz were convinced that fiction on the subject of the Shoah is revelatory of a deeper truth than the purely factual. And what with an account like Krall’s, does it matter if we categorize it as fiction based on a true story or see it as an autobiographical survival account with Krall in the role of chronicler, a wayward ghostwriter going public? Recently I came across a thought assigned to V.S. Naipaul, which I couldn’t track down but struck me as utterly relevant in the borderland of fiction and fact where Hanna Krall is operating: Fiction is a version. Like non-fiction.

(*** ½ )

[Angela M · Rating 5 out of 5]

I continue to read Holocaust stories no matter how gut wrenching, how gruesome, how heartbreaking, no matter how the Holocaust defies what as we as human beings desire to hold sacred, the sanctity of every life. With every one of these stories, whether fiction or true accounts, my feelings on the importance of never forgetting just get stronger. While this story is all of that, it is told in a different way from other books I have read. It's told in almost a matter of fact way that even though simple and straightforward it is full of fear, intensity and the will to escape and save those you love. This is based on a true story and it reads likes memoir. It's a short book and some thoughts on the prose are given by Hanna Krall, the Polish author who lived in hiding through the German occupation of Poland, but lost family. "The greater the despair, the fewer sentences are needed." "The richer the material, the simpler the style should be." The writing in its simplicity and brevity is powerful.

A young Jewish woman. Izolda moves in and out of the ghetto through sewers to get her mother, her husband, who is eventually sent to Auschwitz and she will do anything to get him out . She moves back and forth in and out of places by train, with fake papers and dyed hair. She wants to ask those that she thinks will help her for not one but two places to stay - one for Jews that can't disguise their identity and one for those that can. It is full of the unimaginable courage and indefatigable will in the face of rape, hunger, death, the will to survive but the will to save her husband and family.
All of this and it's a profound love story, too. In places, not just at the end, we meet Izolda's older self as she second guess her actions, tells us about her grandchildren. She's just as strong then. Highly recommended.

I received an advanced copy of this from The Feminist Press at CUNY through Edelweiss.

[Jim Fonseca · Rating 4 out of 5]

[Revised 7/26/23]

This is an unusual book about the holocaust because it follows a Polish Jewish woman and her husband as they work the system available to them to survive the holocaust -- even their imprisonment in Auschwitz. It’s mainly the story of Izolda Regensberg told in vignettes of a few pages each.



They grew up in Warsaw’s Jewish ghetto around 1940 before it was turned into a prison for Jews who were then shipped to Auschwitz where most of them were murdered. But Izolda and her husband were able to get around the city because they had fake papers, they spoke fluent Polish, and they had ‘good looks.’

As the author tells us, Jews with ‘bad looks’ or heavy Yiddish accents, if they could get out of the ghetto (sometimes by paying for a guided escape through the sewers) had to hide in apartments and never be seen at a window. Izolda dyes her black hair blonde and uses a kerchief when her roots start to show.

One by one, despite attempts to escape or to hide, Izolda sees relatives of her and her husband and childhood friends picked off and sent to the camps.

Her husband is caught first and sent to an Auschwitz labor camp and then transferred to another labor camp. Izolda's life becomes devoted to first finding out where he is and sending him food packets. She does a remarkable amount of traveling, visiting friends and supporting herself by carrying paid messages and by barter, even smuggling on occasion. Valuable goods are silk, cigarettes, tobacco leaves, bacon and even cyanide. (She assumes the demand for the last item is from people who want to kill themselves.)

Izolda is arrested four times, even sent to Auschwitz where she is tattooed with a number. She manages to get out each time. How does she do that? At Auschwitz she runs into the infamous Dr. Mengele, the ‘Angel of Death,’ and tells him she is a nurse (she’s not) and her training is wasted in the labor camp. He believes her and has her transferred to a hospital serving German war wounded. Another time she walks out of a labor camp claiming to have gotten lost. On one of her trips, a man helps her get papers to travel to Vienna. Unknown to her, the man who had enabled her passage turns out to be someone who was running a Warsaw-Vienna underground German resistance organization. She is tortured, loses teeth, and confesses to being a Jew, thinking that is a less severe offense than being an underground spy acting against the Reich. After one arrest she is raped by the German soldier who arrested her. He lets her go and then tells her “You see how lucky you are running into a decent person.” One arrest she relates almost humorously. She gets off a train in a provincial town with her blonde hair and city dress. A policewoman arrests her not as a Jew, but as a prostitute. She's sweet talks her way out of that one.

The psychological toll of being a Jew in disguise is immense. Every time she gets on a train she looks over the crowd and has to decide ‘sit, stand, or hide in the toilet?’ She and her husband watch apartments burn in the ghetto but they can’t stand with the other Jews watching in grief and mourning. Instead they stand with the German crowd which yells things like ‘watch those Yids fry.’

Izolda makes sure she makes anti-Jewish slurs to people like her building caretaker so he doesn’t get suspicious. She prays only for small things. She wants to pray that she and her husband be safe through the war but won’t because ‘she feels that is asking too much.’

That psychological toll continues after the war, more so on her husband (The King of Hearts) than on her. Polish officials make them take their real Jewish names back and then expel them for being 'non-citizens.' They go to Vienna where her husband opens a clothing shop. But her husband suffers from a permanent kind of melancholy and depression. He always plays ‘mournful Jewish music.’ Forty years after the war ended he still follows women in the streets he thinks might be his missing sisters from the ghetto. They raise their children as Catholic but both daughters marry Jews and move to Israel to live on a kibbutz.

The Polish Jewish author (b. 1935) wrote about 20 books but only five or so are available in English translation. Basically she ghost-wrote this book for the real Izolda who hired her to tell her story in a novel, hoping it could become a movie. (It has been used as the basis for a stage play.)

But Izolda did not like the drafts that the author came up with, so it ended up as vignettes, basically segments of Izolda's story she dictated to the author. When published in English, the book won a half dozen awards in England from the Guardian newspaper, the British PEN association, a translation award and a Publishers Choice Best Book listing. Despite all that the book seems relatively unknown on Goodreads with only 700 ratings as I write.

Photo of Izolda and her husband, Shayek from Roger Brunyate's review of this book on Goodreads

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the fictionalised true story of Izolda Regensberg and her WW2 experiences which include escaping from the Warsaw Ghetto via the sewers, impersonating an Aryan woman during which she is persecuted by doubts that Jews have a distinctive way of performing virtually every commonplace gesture and being deported to a variety of camps, including Auschwitz. The king of hearts of the title is her young husband Shayek. The laconic, almost breezy tone of this novel, written in the present tense in simple terse sentences, is unique among Holocaust fiction. The horrors of the Holocaust Izolda experiences as inconveniences, obstacles in preventing her from her mission which is to rescue her beloved husband from Mauthausen concentration camp. Often in fictional accounts of the Holocaust characters are depicted as bewildered, terrified, horrified: big life changing emotions are continually pumped into the text: not surprisingly there’s a failure of imagination in the author’s power of empathy. Izolda is never prey to such sweeping all-consuming emotions; she is pragmatic, battle-hardened, nervously alert rather than terrified, and as a result her voice rings much truer than most Holocaust fiction. You get a sense of how relentless horror becomes the everyday norm you have to take in your stride, of how often you have to look the other way unless your spirit is to be annihilated. Izolda is tortured by the Gestapo, twice she finds herself at Auschwitz; she even makes Dr Mengele laugh and yet she understates all these experiences as hurdles to be surmounted rather than horrific monumental moments of spiritual disintegration. The novella is no less moving after the war when Izolda, now in Israel, is called upon by her family to evaluate and articulate her wartime experiences and we see the damage the war did to her and her family. It’s a short book, incredibly easy on the eye but deeply moving and, one feels, much truer to the day by day emotional reality of the Holocaust than most other fictional accounts.

Thanks to Roger and his fantastic review (much better than mine!) for leading me to this moving and memorable book.

[Diane S ☔ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Izolda and her husband along with their families live in the Warsaw ghetto. When her husband is taken and sent to Auschwitz, she will do anything to free him, help him survive. Along the way she tries to save her family and friends but her main focus is her husband. Her King of hearts, and what she does along Tue way to accomplish this is nothing short of staggering.

Told in a series of vignettes, reading very matter of fact and in an, unemotional voice voiced, this is a novel of fear and desperation as well as hope and determination.. It is the hope that she will get to her husband before he is killed by the horrific Nazi killing machine. She is often inadvertently aided by fate, something she will often dwell on in later life. If she didn't do this, that would have happened, if she hadn't gone here, she would have been killed. Without knowing she does and makes many moves that save her life. This is based on a true story, and it really is a wonder the many things she does and how her decisions at the time seem foolish but serve her in the end. Not that she doesn't go through horrific things, she does but her implacable quest to save her husband will also end up saving her. Truly unbelievable events occur that make this possible.

This woman had quite a life, but I am not sure if I liked the unemotional telling, while it was definitely easier to read as far as emotional toll, it also kept me at a distance. Still a remarkable story about a remarkable young woman.

[Roger Brunyate · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not for Hollywood


  Izolda and Shayek

This is a true story. Had it been fiction, it would never have made it past the publisher's readers, on grounds of credibility. For, in trying to save her husband in the Holocaust, Izolda Regensberg manages to pass in and out of the Warsaw ghetto, move between Poland, Germany, and Austria, get captured herself and sent to three or four different camps or prisons—including Auschwitz, twice—but somehow escape, doing what has to be done to survive herself and send word to her husband Shayek that she is still alive. We know from the beginning that she will succeed, that both will survive; this is not a suspense story so much as a meticulous day-by-day accounting of this one woman's experience. Here, complete, is one of the short sections into which the book is divided:

The farmer's wife is fed up with her milking, laundering, threshing, and French and sends her to the labor bureau. She's reassigned to a canvas mill, where she works alongside German women. They tend the looms, fixing any broken threads. There are several hundred looms in the hall, the women run from thread to thread. They're deaf from all the noise, they have varicose veins on their legs and white dust in their hair, eyelashes, and brows . . . They aren't good to her. They aren't bad to her. They are tired. She asks how long they've been running from thread to thread. Fifteen years. Twenty . . . My God, she says, shocked, but the German women cheer her up: You'll get used to it.

I have made a point of seeking out Holocaust books, interested in the technical problem of how you keep telling a story that must keep getting told, but finding a way to make it fresh and compelling each time. But I have never read one like this. The author, Hanna Krall (herself a Holocaust survivor as a child) is a reporter or historian, not a novelist, though she has the novelist's eye for detail. I would place her in the same category as Nobel Prize winner Svetlana Alexievich, author of Voices from Chernobyl, for her skill in telling human stories through objective reportage. Another Nobelist, Herta Müller, said of her:

Her gathering and arrangement of facts gives rise to an unwavering directness that begins to reverberate in the brain. The author's documented realities apparently narrate themselves. But it is the genius of Hanna Krall to eschew all commentary, yet by way of an invisible interference to stand behind every sentence.

Clearly Izolda Regensberg was an exceptional woman. But while she refuses to become one of those million mute victims, she does not emerge as a heroine either. Once able to exit the ghetto by luck or determination, she becomes a kind of stateless person, a piece of human flotsam swirled around in the eddies of war, largely below anyone's notice. The story is so different from the grand narratives of the Holocaust, whether the inexorable path from ghetto to gas chamber, the long years passed in fearful hiding, or the brief blaze of futile resistance. And yet why should her story have a grand line? War is equally characterized by chaos and confusion. The mobility of Izolda's story was a revelation to me. Yet, for all its objectivity, it remains a human tale, not only for the determination on her part, but for her numerous chance encounters with other human beings, good or bad, trying to do the best they can: the policeman who tells her that she articulates the Ave Maria too carefully to be a Catholic, the amorous fellow prisoner who moves back to his own pallet when she tells him stories of her childhood, the torturer who suddenly starts treating her kindly when she tells him she is a Jew.

A surprise: the War ends about two-thirds of the way through the book, though the difficulties and dangers are not yet over. All the same, Izolda and Shayek are reunited, as we always knew they would be, but that is not the end. Just as Izolda's story defies all the conventions of Holocaust narrative, so Krall stays clear of the happy-ever-after ending. Nonetheless, I found the final chapter more moving than anything else in the book. Izolda, now an old woman, has moved to Israel, where she is surrounded by her granddaughters. But she has never learned Hebrew and they do not speak Polish. The last few pages are punctuated by paragraphs in Hebrew, the everyday chatter of the young people, translated in the footnotes but incomprehensible to her, a foreigner in her own family. Meanwhile, Izolda is searching for someone who can understand her, someone to hear her story and retell it, confident that it could make a Hollywood movie for Elizabeth Taylor. So she hires Hanna Krall. Eventually, though, Krall was able to convince her that the true path did not lead through Hollywood. And the result is this masterpiece.


Hanna Krall

I read this in the 2017 American edition by the Feminist Press, which I do not recommend, since it has plain card covers that curl up in high humidity. The same excellent translation by Philip Boehm was published in England in 2013 by the Peirene Press, whose books are always beautifully produced. I would suggest looking out for it if you can. The one thing you would miss is the afterword in the American edition by Mariusz Szczygiel, a former student of Krall's, who gives a detailed account of the genesis of the book. It is excellent, but not worth the curling covers.

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer · Rating 4 out of 5]

She lays out the cards and sees everything: man with blond hair, in love, in other words the king of hearts. See he’s already out of the door. Terenia studies the picture card and suddenly her voice becomes gleeful: your king has a trip ahead of him, what are you worried about. Sher’s right, there he is second row, first card on the right – the king of hearts. Next to him is the six of hears, which means a triup. Of course those three spades are a bad sign, Terenia explains, but even that’s not so tragic: you should be getting news any day now

This book was recently longlisted for the US Best Translated Book Award after its publication their in 2017: by coincidence I had recently purchased it from Peirene Press (alongside an on-going subscription) who published this translation (by Philip Boehm) in the UK in 2013. The book was originally published in Polish in 2006.

This book was published by the UK small press, Peirene Press “a boutique publishing house with a traditional commitment to first class European literature in high-quality translation” and whose style is described by the TLS as “Two-hour books to be devoured in a single sitting; literary cinema for those fatigued by film”

The book tells the story of Izolda Regenburg – a Polish Jew and her experience during the holocaust. A story that is remarkable, because it is different from the conventional (if ever shocking and harrowing) holocaust tales – Izolda does not spend the war in hiding (as did the book’s author who hid in a cupboard) and was not killed in a concentration camp (although she spent time at Auschwitz, she persuaded Josef Mengele to allow her to act as a nurse on a transport heading towards Austria). Instead, starting with bribing her way out of the Warsaw Ghetto she spends the war in motion, under the alias of Maria Pawilcka, often arrested or detained, at one stage tortured as a suspected Polish resistance member, but always escaping, trading what she has (including her own body) to survive and to continue in her search for her husband, detained in a concentration camp.

And remarkable too because this is a true story - looking back after the war, in Israel, Izolda thinks

She listens to stranger’s tales with genuine sympathy, one person hid in a basement, another in a root cellar, an attic, a closet, a haystack. They lived through terrible things, but there experiences weren’t so varied. Unlike hers. She grows more and more convinced that her life is a great subject for a book. Or even a film ….. {Elizabeth} Taylor could play the lead

But instead she ultimately ends up with her story being told in the book we have in our hands.

The book is written in a simple present tense, in a series of captioned sections, and this captures well the nature of Izolda’s war time life, living day to day, subject to the vagaries and arbitrariness of war and the Nazi regime, focused only on finding her husband.

The thought of her husband makes her heart ache so much she feels it will explode. She breaks into tears and the woman from the next bunk gives her a scolding look. You’re crying over a fellow aren’t you. I can bet it’s not for your mother. Now listen here and don’t you forget; you can have as many fellows as you’d like, but you can only have one mother …. I know, she agrees. I only have one mother, but as far as I am concerned the whole world can go up in flames or disappear – just as long as he stays alive

She takes refuge in playing cards to convince herself he is still alive – giving the book its title (as per the opening quote).

At times the cast of characters that Izolda interacts with and her relationship to them can be bewildering but this too is I think a realistic reflection of her wartime life, those around her are either steps along her path to find her husband or people she treats kindly as part of a grand bargain with God to save her husband’s life – and she will make use of any contact or connection to keep herself and her quest alive.

She’s supposed to meet a man they call “The Doctor”. She doesn’t know him. He’s an acquaintance of Sonia Landau (Izolda barely knows her). [Her husband] Shayek’s sisters were friends with Sonia [as children]”

Eventually Maria “Finally admits she is a Jew because she has had enough” – to her bafflement the Gestapo agent torturing her suddenly treats her well saying

If you were working for General Anders, you would be our enemy. Naturally you would die just like an enemy does. Since you are a Jew, naturally you’ll also die, but you aren’t guilty …. You can’t be guilty for the faith of your fathers

The last third of the book is set after the war’s end – Izolda and her husband (her eventual discovery of him being an anti-climax for her) try to disguise their identity unsuccessfully in communist Poland. Her husband is haunted by the death of the rest of his family and cannot but blame Izolda for having not done more to prevent it – and the two drift apart.

After what the Gestapo officer said to her, Izolda resolves that her own children, if she has any, will not be punished just for being Jews, but to her bewilderment her daughters both migrate to Israel after the war

Izolda remembers her conversations with Nicole – about her children not dying, guilty of nothing but … It must have been an evil hour when she said those words, she thinks terrified

Overall this is a powerful book.

[Ringa Sruogienė · Rating 5 out of 5]

4,55* Metų iššūkio sąraše užims vietą: "knyga apie kurį nors pasaulinį karą".
Holokaustas. Beprotiškai didelė meilė sutuoktiniui. Velniška sėkmė siaubingose situacijose (nuolat pasikartojanti). Pats knygos stilius - labai keistas. Yra perliukų, bet ir pelų grūduose. Nuojauta kužda, kad jei galite skaityti lenkiškai, tai skaitykite originalo kalba.
Nepaisant visų pastangų surasti ir išgelbėti vyrą, abiems išgyvenus karą, džiaugsmo ir laimės nėra...

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Chasing The King Of Hearts" certainly deepened my understanding of the struggle for survival and also my compassion for those who will do almost anything to keep themselves and their beloved alive. I have long understood that desperate times call for desperate measures. And I have witnessed desperation itself leading to acts of reckless abandon and even loss of reason. But this novella brought these points home in new, forceful ways.

"And she prefers her new self to the real thing. So what does that mean? That her disguised self...that her pretend self is better than her real self."

Following Izolda through the story's developments, we see how this exchange of "real" for "pretend" leads to the loss of her pre-war self and the complete adoption of a new way of being. What begins as an assumed identity is actually just the first step in a transfiguration. (There are several references to opera in this tale, and there is more than a passing nod to "Tristan und Isolde" here.).

The interesting blend of Krall's objective reporting and Izolda's occasionally embellished recollections casts a unique spell. This feels very much like how we actually experience our own life stories as time passes. How much of what we relate now is factual, how much is invented, and how much has irrevocably jumped from one category to the next? And why?

[Will Ansbacher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fictionalized memoir is a difficult genre, particularly when the subject is the Holocaust, and at first I wasn’t sure what parts were only “based on” Izolda Regensberg’s experiences. But it is an amazing tale containing exploits and chance encounters that would be next to unbelievable if they were fiction, so in that sense it is more like an authentic memoir as would be told to a ghostwriter. In Israel, Izolda had wanted to tell her life story to her granddaughters, but she didn’t speak Hebrew and they didn’t understand Polish.

Izolda survived Auschwitz, the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto, imprisonment and labour camps by posing as a Polish Catholic. It was only partly successful and several times her cover was blown:
After being challenged to recite the Hail Mary, which she did - very precisely –

Listen to you, the policeman laughs out loud. What normal person says Hail Mary like that? Usually it’s hailmaryfullofgracethelordiswiththee … you really are a Jew!
… it never occurred to her that there might be a Jewish way of saying the Hail Mary

Several times she escaped deportation because she was taken for a common criminal; another time being revealed as Jewish saved her from immediate execution as part of the Polish Resistance.

In fact she was apolitical, the driving force behind the huge risks she took was only to ensure that her husband (the “King of Hearts”) survived the camps to where he had been deported. He did, but their reunion after the war was something of a let-down for her as they had grown apart. Like many, he was consumed by survivor guilt while she chafed at the dullness of peacetime life, and they separated.

So, a gripping and gritty tale though not without dark humour.

But the writing is terse to the point of aridity (was that the English translation, though?) and I had difficulty following the thread in places. Significant events were dismissed in less than a sentence or just assumed, and the chronology seemed fractured. It took a close second reading for me to appreciate it more, and even then, I found it a bit disjointed.

[Friederike Knabe · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fast-paced story of dramatic survival through smarts, cleverness, courage and luck on the one hand and the pain and suffering and many losses on the other. Review to follow.

[Antonomasia · Rating 4 out of 5]

A short novel about the experience of a Polish Jewish woman during the Second World War, based on a true story. What makes this different from much "Holocaust literature" is how much of an adventure it turns into; it often reads like the trials and tribulations of a Resistance heroine, except that Izolda's cause is not her entire country, simply her friends and relatives, in particular her new husband - first to get them out of the Warsaw ghetto, and then trying to get him out of a concentration camp. As with the family in Art Spiegelman's Maus, jaw-dropping good luck, connections, and various skills both practical and social, enabled some of the people in Chasing the King of Hearts to survive the war whilst millions did not. (If I hadn't read Maus quite recently, I may have been incredulous about the sheer number of things people pull off.) Unlike the Spiegelmans, Izolda travels around long-distance, tries to make deals, uses disguises - though she too is eventually arrested. It's told in very short chapters and rather a detached style: often it is an account of what happened, minus fine detail, with occasional intrusion of strong feelings beautifully described. This reflects the experience of partial emotional shut-down in emergency situations whilst concentrating on methodically, obsessively getting things done and on survival. Some reviewers have commented that the style makes it difficult to connect with the protagonist, but if you have or recognise this shut-down tendency, then the narrative approach completely makes sense. Chasing the King of Hearts wasn't perhaps as amazing as the small-press publishers, Peirene, made it out to be - as the best of their books so far - but it will be of interest to those who want to hear stories of remarkable ordinary women during the Second World War or who get tired of the cumulative passivity of many characters in wartime litfic.

[Pečivo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chce se mi napsat, že je to jen další kniha o holokaustu, ale to bych lhal. A kdo lže ten krade a do pekla se hrabe. A já nemám lopatu a právě jsem se osprchoval, tudíž se nechci zašpinit a tak nebudu psát, že je to jen další kniha o holokaustu.

Jedna pani v Polsku byla židovka. Ono těch židovských pani teda bylo víc, ale tadle velmi toužila po tom, aby její příběh zfilmoval hollywood a hrála ji Elizabeth Taylor. Někdo ji ale po válce řekl, že by bylo nejlepší, kdyby nejdřív napsala o svým životě knihu. Jelikož knihy psát neuměla, najala si ghostwritera - Hanu Krall. Škoda, že nechtěla ghostridera, to by totiž přijel Nicolas Cage a to by teprv byl mejdan!

Pani si představovala, že její ne tak neobyčejný osud - manžela odvedli do koncentráku, ona přežila díky různým náhodám a štěstí, aby se s nim nakonec shledala a po válce zjistila, že láska není věčná - vydá na 1000 stran. Naštěstí pani Krallová není mental a našvihala to na 130 stránek.

Formou reportáže ve třetí osobě podáný svědectví o známých tématech. Tady navíc i půl knihy o tom, jak se žilo manželům po válce. Za mne dobrý, nedivím se, že Krallová je kamarádka Herty Müller a Světlany Alexijevičový.

Jestli nakonec došlo ke zfilmování jsem se nedozvěděl - jestli ne, pane Olmer! Mám nápad! Zavolejte Jiřině Bohdalový a nějak to zkoulíme!

[Siv30 · Rating 4 out of 5]

לסקירה מפורטת בעברית, קישור לבלוג שלי -

https://sivi-the-avid-reader.com/שוב-...

[Anysha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Vlastně asi jedna z nejméně "typických" knih o holokaustu, co jsem četla - jednotlivé obrazy se prolínají, pádí dopředu a čtenář má dojem, jako by byl součástí Izoldiných převleků. Vlastně o čemkoliv jiném je pro mě tato kniha o identitě, o jejím rozbití a nemožnosti slepit tyhle střepy zpátky, o tom, že budou bodat ještě po letech, o tom, jestli je vlastně šlechetné něco dělat jen pro lásku, když deset je víc než jeden a pocit viny doutná..

[Renata Vysniauskaite · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5

[Beverly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thoughts coming shortly

[Vygandas Ostrauskis · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5/5

„Turi kitą vardą ir kitokią plaukų spalvą, kitokį balsą, juoką ir rankinės pasidėjimo būdą. Ir ta kita visiems priimtinesnė už tikrąją... ta būtybė, kurią ji vaidina, yra geresnė už tikrąją“.
Ne, knyga ne apie aktorę. Dar kartą apie holokaustą, bet kitaip. Apie jauną moterį, kuriai tenka rinktis, bet dažniau pasirenkama ji. Ji ypatinga; ji turi laukimą (prisipažįsta: tai pats tikriausias dalykas, kurį ji turi), ir jį padiktavo be galo didelė meilė.
Pasakoja (autorės lūpomis) apie save atvirai, tarsi nebemokėtų ir nebegalėtų gėdytis. Ji nieko nedarė veltui ir dėlto nesijaučia nė kiek kalta. Todėl, kad viskas vardan meilės. „Tik dėl mano maldų, minčių, mano stiprybės ir tikėjimo jis išgyveno“. Dėl aukų prasmingumo – galima sutikti, galima ir ne, bet juk patys nebuvome (ir duok Dieve, kad nebūtume) jos kailyje...

Romano tekstas pasižymi puikiu lakoniškumu, tiesiog telegrafiniu stiliumi, kinematografine struktūra. Visa tai šiek tiek blaško dėmesį skaitant, bet ne per daug, nors nuo kaleidoskopiškumo gali pradėti suktis galva. Herojės gyvenimas – atmintyje išlikusių akimirkų trupiniai. Gerai elgtasi, blogai, tiesiog nepakenčiamai ir tuo pačiu didvyriškai – vertinti nesinori, kaip ir pragyventi tokį gyvenimą. Bet kad būta taip – skaitydamas patiki, ir tai didelis autorės pasiekimas.

Apie svarbius dalykus rašoma gan paviršutiniškai; ilgainiui tai įgrįsta – tarp visų romano minusų šis, mano supratimu, didžiausias. Nepatiko man ir pabaiga (ne dėl siužeto, bet dėl ištęstumo ir išradingumo stokos). Atsižvelgiant į autorės lakoniškumą tekste, romaną buvo galima užbaigti kur kas greičiau ir netikėčiau.
Tad bendras vertinimas – 7 balai.

[Marina Sofia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very moving, despite its quite matter-of-fact, understated style (or perhaps precisely because of it).

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lovely read - yes, just when you think you cannot possibly want to read yet another Holocaust novel, this novella comes along. Glad I read it.

[Kristina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Žaviuosi rašytojais, kurie, atrodytų trumpais ir paprastais sakiniais, geba išreikšti tikrą jausmą. Šiuo atveju siaubą, nostalgiją, kaltę. Apie tai ir yra ši knyga.

[Marta Johansson · Rating 4 out of 5]

3,5/4

Vacker prosa. Baserad på verklig händelse. Handlar om hur en kvinna på grund av sin kärlek till sin man överlever förintelsen.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maybe this is an important book? It’s not the perspective one usually thinks of for a book set in Jewish communities in Poland during the war, it has maybe only moments of the horrors that must have been everywhere. But it has some realness and character and it tells me a lot about the lives of the people rather than their deaths.

[Alison Hardtmann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Chasing the King of Hearts tells the story of Izolda, who meets Shayek in Warsaw during WWII and marries him. They live first in the ghetto until Izolda, who is unrelentingly resourceful and determined, smuggles herself out. She manages to get Shayek out too, as well as their parents but the war is harsh and unrelenting and over time their family members disappear or are arrested. Shayek is eventually arrested and all of Izolda's ingenuity is focused on getting to him. She endures much and survives because of her ability to think on her feet and to take any chances she sees.

From the beginning of the story we know that Izolda survives. There are segments set long after the war, when Izolda is an elderly woman living in Israel trying to tell her story to her grandchildren. The reader knows that she lives, but how she survives makes for quite a story. Izolda is a real person, who found the author, Hanna Krall, and asked her to write her story for her. Krall is well respected as a journalist in Poland and documents people's experiences in a narrative style much like Svetlana Alexievich. Here, she tells Izolda's story in a straight-forward way, eliding much of the harsher moments, but without omitting them. The reader knows Izolda is raped or that the conditions of her imprisonment were harsh, but these events are presented as facts, less important than her overriding need to find her husband.

She follows the policewoman.

The nearest station is on Poznanska Street. Not a good place, getting out won't be easy.

She has her pearl ring. She thinks: Should I give it to her right away? And why did she say you're all alike? By all she means Jews. Excuse me, Ma'am, she risks the question. What did you mean by all alike? Stop playing dumb--the policewoman now makes no effort to be polite. I'm from the vice squad, now do you understand?

Now she understands.

They're not taking her for a Jew but for a whore. What a relief, thank God, they're just taking me for a whore.

The sheer number of close calls and daring escapes experienced by this single woman would sound unlikely in a novel, but Izolda's personality and determination made each unlikely moment feel inevitable. This is an extraordinary story.

[Sophie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A holocaust story that is described as a “documentary fable. The story itself is incredible but so are the circumstances of its getting written and published. It is based on the real experiences of a young Jewish woman separated from her husband. Against all odds, she survives by her wits, looks and kindness of others in her search for her love.

As an elderly woman, Izolda Regensberg searches for the perfect author for her story. I believe Hanna Krall was the ideal choice. Krall’s story is pretty interesting as well.

[Rachel Beaver · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't know if I just don't like translations, or if I'm reading the wrong ones. I thought this was very unemotional considering the subject. I struggled to finish.

[Tatyana Naumova · Rating 4 out of 5]

Гетто, концлагерь, вставные зубы.

[Joanna Slow · Rating 4 out of 5]

„Król kier znów na wylocie” był jedną z inspiracji Krzysztofa Warlikowskiego przy tworzeniu jego najnowszego spektaklu w Nowym Teatrze. To właśnie premiera spektaklu zmotywowała mnie do ponownego spotkania z Hanna Krall. Bohaterką reportażu jest Izolda Regensberg.
Młoda kobieta, której motywacją i nadrzędnym celem podczas wojny było odnalezienie i ocalenie męża Szajka, z którym została rozdzielona w warszawskim getcie. To historia jak dla Hollywood, pełna trudnych do uwierzenia zwrotów akcji wynikających wyłącznie z przypadku. Jak materiał na filmowy scenariusz, postrzegała swoje wojenne przeżycia sama bohaterka, gdy po wojnie szukała kogoś, kto opisze historię jej wielkiej miłości. Tylko autentyzm przedstawianych wydarzeń i piękny, surowy język Hanny Krall w połączeniu z misterną konstrukcją, sprawiają, że nie powstał z tego trudny w lekturze romans przygodowy. Pięknie wykorzystał tę opowieść w „Odysei. Historii dla Hollywoodu” Krzysztof Warlikowski stawiając pytanie o to jak mówić o Zagładzie.

[Zuzka Jakúbková · Rating 5 out of 5]

Napínavé dielo o osude poľskej Židovky počas druhej svetovej vojny, ktorá urobí všetko preto, aby zachránila svojho manžela.

[Vero-Nika · Rating 5 out of 5]

Silný příběh a skvělý způsob vyprávění.