The Requisitions

by Samuél Lopez-Barrantes

History, memory, and love intertwine in this historical metafiction set in Nazi-occupied Poland.

"Vivid in a way that is almost tangible ... In spite of its grim subject matter, The Requisitions is a strangely and luminously hopeful novel." Raina Lipsitz, The Metropolitan Review

In this ​​​​​​​historical metafiction set in Nazi-occupied Poland, a present-day narrator trying to make sense of his past recounts the story of Viktor, a disillusioned academic forced into the Łódź Ghetto, Elsa, a captive Gestapo secretary, and her estranged fiancé, Carl, a troubled policeman whose fixation with the past is pushing him towards unspeakable cruelty.

Inspired by Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See, Laurent Binet's HhHH, and Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, The Requisitions is a historical metafiction about history, memory, and what we choose to remember, a page-turning literary fiction about remaining human during inhumane times.

"Original, deftly crafted, memorable [...] one of those novels that will linger in the mind of the reader longer after the book has been finished and set back upon the shelf." James A. Cox, The Midwest Review

Genres: Fiction

220 pages, Paperback

Published June 21, 2024

About the author

Samuél Lopez-Barrantes is a Spanish American author based in Paris. His debut, Slim and The Beast (Inkshares, 2015) is a coming-of-age story set in Chapel Hill, NC. It is about male friendship, the pursuit of passion, and a jealous man.

His second novel, The Requisitions (Kingdom Anywhere, 2024) is a historical metafiction set in Nazi occupied Poland. It is about the difference between history & memory & how to remain human during inhumane times.

Reviews

[Kate O'Shea · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Requisitions is a story within a story. We begin with a boy remembering a favourite book, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich and the experiences of the fictional character of Victor Bauman.

The story, sadly, is all too believable. Set in Łódź, Poland between 1939 and 1942. It follows the lives of the people who are regulars at The Astoria Café (a haven for artists and thinkers in the 30s). However their lives all change after the German invasion. Elsa Dietriech is forced into cooperating as the secretary of a vicious SS officer and Carl (her self-proclaimed fiancé) is in the squads who rounded up and murdered Polish Jews and the Roma population, forcing them into the ghettos.

Other characters flit in and out of their lives but the one constant is the fear. Fear of being tortured, fear of being raped, fear of the camps and starvation.

This is a very powerful book. It leaves you breathless with terror at times, willing the characters to have some luck whilst willing others to meet an unfortunate end.

There are historical characters in the book such as Chaim Rumkovski, head of the Judenrat in Lodz, who was beaten to death by members of the Sonderkommand for his part in the removal of 20,000 children from the ghetto to the Chelmno extermination camp.

For me it is our ability as humans to turn on each other in order to ensure our own survival that is the most sickening aspect. Nonetheless I would highly recommend this book. It may be fiction but the events are far too real and should never be forgotten.

Very highly recommended.

Thankyou very much to Netgalley and Kingdom Anywhere for the advance review copy.

[Rebecca Holstein · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book stunned me into a raw, contemplative, wordless fugue state. I leave Viktor, Elsa, Martin, Calel, Rachel, Carl, and all of Łódź in a daze, with what I can only hope is a more nuanced understanding of what it means to be human. But as the author so wisely states: to explain is not excuse, and to understand is not to forgive.

[Stephen Clapp · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been fascinated by the events surrounding World War II for as long as I can remember and find myself watching every documentary or YouTube video I can find on the subject. Even compared with videos, nothing I've encountered has ever come as close as The Requisitions has in painting such a raw & vivid picture of life during this time period, from three fascinating perspectives in Viktor, Elsa, and Carl.

Samuél Lopez-Barrantes jumps back and forth between his upbringing and life as a young adult in our present day to war time during the 1930's & 1940's. The reader is unable to avoid questioning his or her own life and think of what they would do if they were to walk in the Viktor's, Elsa's, or Carl's shoes.

An immense amount of emotion was evoked from the beginning of the novel through the last sentence. The subliminal and sometimes direct questions asked of the reader are nearly impossible to answer. I found myself with a thirst for each next page in hopes of finding those answers.

With an increasing trend of authoritarian governments popularizing in all corners of the globe, this novel should be essential reading for everyone to remind them that the once unthinkable indeed became a reality for millions. At the same time, this novel serves as a reminder that there are beautiful acts of humanity even in the darkest of times.

For those who have read Viktor Frankl's, "Man's Search for Meaning", you will find tremendous appreciation towards the author, Samuél Lopez-Barrantes, for elaborating on the story of one of the most important figures in human history.

[Jennifer Kafka · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow! The Requisitions was definitely an enthralling story, and it had me thinking of the characters even after I put the book down.

The writing is intelligent, interesting, and sometimes grotesque. I could do without the “he squished his penis back into his pants” visual that was repeated at least three times, but other than that it was enjoyable.

I have yet to read a WWII book like this so it was definitely unique. I didn’t love the ending after he got me hooked on the characters but we are left wondering what remains in the end.

Thank you Net Galley and Kingdom Anywhere Publishing for allowing me to read this book.

[Anna Petrova · Rating 5 out of 5]

“History forgives nothing. It only ever forgets”

Beautifully written, heartbreaking and terrifying, this is one of the best books I’ve read on the subject matter.

[John Sannaee · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm going to start this review by saying that historical fiction has never particularly appealed to me. But this is not your standard work of historical fiction (or whatever I imagine that to be). Yes, it is meticulously researched; but it feels horrifyingly more like a work of speculative fiction, at this time when people are forgetting - perhaps more than the horrors of WW2 and the Holocaust, than the route that so quickly led to them. So, on the one hand, this is a visceral lesson that we should all be paying attention to, and yet, as the 'authorial' metanarrative painstakingly reminds us, it is also a fiction, examining with humanity and on the whole a lightness of touch, that evil and horror are not so very far from our minds, our everyday, and the emotions of love and joy. All of this is brought to life (and to its inevitable death) with a realistic approach to humans, their motivations and limits, that never feels heavy handed. I particularly enjoyed the metanarrative moments which elevate this novel beyond an hommage and a warning to something that feels alive and in dialogue with the present, the reader, and also humanity's hope and potential. The ending was also a masterclass in ethical representation of the trauma of others.

[Tim Ward · Rating 5 out of 5]

We all know the truism, “Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.” Yet how can the Millennial generation possibly grasp the horror and inhumanity of the Holocaust, which occurred eighty years ago now, almost beyond human memory? The Requisitions is the story of a young man obsessed with the the Holocaust since childhood. He writes a novel about a ghetto in Poland during the Nazi invasion to help him understand from the inside what it was like. Using this narrative device, we see his characters drawn from within the narrator’s consciousness as they each in their own way struggle to reconcile themselves with an impossible world: Viktor - the tortured professor (literally, that’s no metaphor), forced to serve on the “committee’ within the ghetto, for whom survival is defiance; Carl, the German police officer drawn into a world of brutality he is too weak to resist; and Elsa, the translator compelled to work for the town's Nazi chief, but justifying her cooperation by using her access to falsify records, protect the Jews, and fight back. These and other characters bring us right inside the hellish world in which those inside are forced to choose who will live, and who will die. It is riveting reading, and never lets the reader feel the safe distance of history. For we take this journey with the narrator, in his quest to live his character’s experiences from the inside. The result is viscerally uncomfortable—and perhaps this is necessary for the memory of the Holocaust to remain present and real within us.

[Zachary Press · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautifully written and thoroughly researched work of historical fiction. I have been reading Holocaust literature since grade school, and Lopez-Barrantes' impressive novel succeeds in telling the story of those who were among the first to suffer at the hands of the Nazis. It is a triumph of reminding us how ordinary people have the courage and strength to overcome even the most inhumane circumstances.

[Mila Phelps Friedl · Rating 5 out of 5]

I couldn’t put this book down once I started. With intriguing characters, a well-structured plot, and a whole lot of heart, this book examines the difference between history and memory. As a work of meta-fiction, readers will find themselves wondering along with the fictional writer how do we share stories for those who cannot share their own? Reminiscent of Anthony Doerr's All The Light We Cannot See, The Requisitions is a captivating read full of honest reflections on the state of humanity.

[Wes Spence · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Write what you know." Knowing Samuel I could tell he poured so much of himself into this novel. His interests, his background, weaving it into a story that had me engrossed from the beginning to the end.

One thing I particularly liked is that not everything had to be answered clearly, the why. History is opaque. What was a little jarring to me were the transitions from the "present" to the "past".

Can't wait to see what else this author has in store.

[Paul Wagenbreth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Acquaintances over the years have thought I was putting them on when I told them about a famous – or perhaps I should say infamous – psychology experiment in the 1960s in which experimenters were surprised by how willing their subjects were to go along with the experimenters’ instruction to administer what the subjects thought were ever-greater electric shocks to people in another room in an experiment supposedly about learning but actually about dominance, with experimenters expecting to encounter at least some resistance but instead getting near-total compliance. So willing, indeed, were the uninformed subjects to go along with what the experimenters asked of them, so ready to acquiesce to what they saw as responsible authority, that just the slightest nod of official encouragement could get them to administer levels of shocks so severe that, according to the instructor of the psychology course in which I first learned of the experiment, the people supposedly being shocked in the other room would be pounding on the other side of the wall begging for the shocks to stop.
Hard to believe, as I say, and not just the near-total compliance shown by the subjects, but also, especially when viewed through the lens of our socially conscious or “woke” times, that such an experiment could have been mounted at all, given the serious ethical considerations it raised – how would you like to go through life knowing you’d proven yourself a willing torturer.
But the experiment got at the abiding question of the years immediately following the Holocaust – what sorts of people could perpetrate the sorts of atrocities committed in the camps. And the uncomfortable answer, it seemed from the experiment, was a whole lot more people than you might think, a finding that was corroborated by a couple of other such later experiments, including one in which schoolchildren with blue eyes were told they were superior to kids with brown eyes and the blue-eyed kids lorded it over the brown-eyed kids with great relish, or another experiment in which subjects were divided into guards and inmates and, again, the guards showed no hesitancy in lording it over the inmates.
All of which is very much germane to Samuel Lopez-Barrantes’ “The Requisitions,” a metafiction in the vein of Julian Barnes or Salman Rushdie or Joan Didion (all of whom are cited in the novel) in which all three experiments are cited and which, for all its seemingly compelling story of three characters caught up in the Holocaust and the Lodz ghetto, nevertheless faces the difficulty inherent in all metafiction – how a reader can be expected to care about a book’s characters if they're told from the get-go, as they are in Lopez-Barrantes’ novel, that the characters are all figments of the author’s or main character’s imagination.
It’s something, of course, that’s true of all fiction by its very definition, that the characters or situations aren't real, with the difference being that in regular fiction the absence of any authorial intrusion can have a reader believing at least for a time that the characters actually are real, whereas in metafiction all such pretense of actuality is abandoned. So complete, indeed, is the dropping of the pretense of actuality that it gets at the very heart of what fiction is, whether it’s, in Graham Greene’s parlance, an “entertainment,” something to be enjoyed solely for its story line, or something more probing or philosophical in the way of, say, Rachel Cusk, of whom it’s been said that not just plot but characters have been jettisoned.
Not that characters in metafiction can’t be presented as fully rounded – a big part of Barnes’ accomplishment, for all his fictional playfulness, is his ability to still make you care about his characters, something that Lopez-Barrantes would have you feel for his characters as well, with how he so meticulously details the credentials of his main-character professor or how he particularizes the horrificness of the situations that engulf him and the other two main characters, a young woman and her conflicted German soldier.
But are they enough, amid the metafictional scaffolding, to truly engage a reader and have him turning pages?
It’s a question, obviously, to be decided by individual readers – personally, I found the metafictional aspect loosely enough integrated that it pretty well drops out completely during the last third of the novel – but however successful or not you find it, it’s not as put-offingly employed as with other metafictional authors, and along the way you’ll learn much that you might not have known about the Lodz ghetto in particular and the second World War in general – for instance, that in Lodz, the prewar Jewish population was almost 200,000 but by the end of the war was fewer than 10,000; and, about the war in general, that the usually given date of Sept. 1, 1939, for the war’s beginning, with Germany’s invasion of Poland, was preceded by German efforts to suggest provocation. Or as Lopez-Barrantes’ professor puts it, history in the end is the study of our own deception.

[Petya Georgieva Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my top books of 2024! An honest and hopeful historical fiction about the Second World War. Samuél tells the story so skillfully and leaves a heartfelt mark.

[Bethan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Requisitions
By Samuel Lopez- Barrantes
Chapter 4 Page 63
Identity

||:: “She's going to be fine,” The head surgeon reassured him.
“You've done everything you can, Doctor. Bauman. She is in good hands. There's a clinic we are working with in Portugal. She'll be treated there. And not to worry : we're only concerned with the prefrontal lobe.”
What terrifies Viktor most to this day is, in that moment, he actually believed them. But what else could he have done? He'd already tried insulin injections in Paris and a combination or malaria therapy and barbiturates in Brussels. After that he placed his faith in the science of an ice pick and a scooper. Barbarity in the name of love.
A fate worse than death. ::||

We follow Victor, a professor, or he used to be, as he attempts to make sense of The Nazi's movements, plans, and mindset. He searches for their reasoning behind the barbaric treatment of his fellow kin and still in the end refuses to believe that humankind can't end this way, with evil latched on to those, who find themselves in the position of such power.

As we learn Victor's story, we are also taken on a journey with the author as he masters his family jigsaw with his love of history and understanding of those who have been through it.

This composition of facts, a little fiction, and a whole lot of bravery, has been one of the most compelling reads I have come across. Victor is there in my minds eye, his belief in once more tasting freedom and the light of his kindness shining through him, catapulting him to a higher standard.

Why was the Nazi's able to follow Hitler so blindly? And without little details as to why?
The series of events may or may not have happened, but it's such a fantastic read. Highly recommend for anyone, researching or interested in an entirely different approach to the men and women, who was only to happy to wear their masks of evil, with little to no sway needed.
And the poor souls, whose only crime was to breathe.

Thank you so much to Samuèl Lopez-Barrantes, Kingdom Anywhere Publishing, and Netgalley for the opportunity to read and relay my honest feedback

[Brenda · Rating 5 out of 5]

This powerful World War II book deeply gripped me and took my breath away. Beautifully told with fiction woven into a lot of nonfiction, this is a particularly stellar book. I love that the present narrator is on the outside looking in, trying to put together the puzzling pieces of humanity with a thought provoking perspective. Historical details are rich, colourful and all sensory, sweeping me away from the first paragraph to the last. Many details are graphic and disturbing as you would expect considering the subject matter. A few observations were unnecessary in furthering the story in my view but all in all, this story is more than a book. It is an experience. I learned more about the history of the time such as the first casualty of the war. The explanations are not watered down and I had several "aha" moments which will stick with me. The writing itself is superb, intense and kept me on tenterhooks. Many characters are deplorable, others courageous, all written plausibly.

Łódź Ghetto was home to many Jews including Viktor in German-occupied Poland and life was brutal. They were treated horrifically and people desperately did what was necessary to survive what a few years prior would never have occurred to them. But soon deportations occurred and torment, fear, humiliation, abuse and death were constants. Amongst others, former professor Viktor paid dearly for taking the high road. He clung to the hope of seeing Elsa again. Elsa was forced to become Nazi Brandt's personal secretary which meant far more than desk and coffee duties. But the job and her quick thinking enabled her to to save others. Her estranged fiancée was a predator on the prowl, searching for prey to devour. No one was really safe and trust became a thing of the past. But even under the direst circumstances the human spirit is capable of great things. Conversely, pervasive evil is shown in its purest and darkest form. It really got under my skin which made me feel like taking a bath. THAT is excellent writing.

My sincere thank you to Kingdom Anywhere Publishing and NetGalley for providing me with a digital copy of this stellar book.

[Martina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Set primarily in Poland during World War 2 yet linking themes to modern day characters, it's obvious that The Requisitions is an intensely personal novel for author Samuel Lopez-Barrantes. One part intimately tells the story of the author's struggle to support an aging mother while the other explores the struggles of 3 characters (Viktor, Elsa, and Carl) trying to survive the horrors of Nazi occupation. The dance between modern and historic characters is really well crafted. For me, bringing the story back to the author's perspective gave me a reprieve from the tragedy of the captured city and its characters. Ironically, though, in both struggles, there really is no way out, and the book marches unflinchingly towards the fate that all characters are caught up in.

I felt deeply for the characters and kept looking for an escape that brings that ideal "happy ending" we all want. You'll need to read the book yourself to see if that is possible.

I found myself stopping and restarting the book a few times to make sure I didn't miss elements that linked the characters together. The book deals a lot with memory it's importance, but also whether it can be trusted. Characters deal with difficult situations by projecting backwards into these memories, and in this way it reminded me a lot of Jack London's The Star Rover which deals with the mind and how it can help the body survive impossible situations. How the characters all come together in the end is fascinating and kept me thinking about how the story would or should end long after I finished reading.

I highly recommend this book not only for that storyline, but also for the deep research and knowledge of the Holocaust that Samuel brings to the pages. It opened my eyes to a world I didn't know anything about and pulled me in with every twist of the two stories. Samuel is also a Substack writer (https://substack.com/@ifnotparis), and it's definitely worth exploring some of his other works too!

[Sarah McKay · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Requisitions tells a layered story. It starts with a boy recalling his favorite book, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, and the fictional character Victor Bauman. He becomes fixated on the Holocaust and the psychology behind genocide. The narrator's recollection of this childhood memory serves as a lens through which we witness the terrifying events of the occupation. The novel skillfully shifts between the narrator's search for the truth about Lodz, historical facts, and the imagined lives of three main characters. The narrative is set in Łódź, Poland, from 1939 to 1942, focusing on the regulars at The Astoria Café, a refuge for artists and thinkers in the 30s, whose lives are drastically altered by the German invasion. Elsa Dietriech is compelled to work as the secretary for a brutal SS officer, while Carl, her self-styled fiancé, participates in the squads that round up and kill Polish Jews and the Roma, forcing them into ghettos. All the while, the narrator is also dealing with his aging mother and the difficulties of caring for her. Historical figures like Chaim Rumkovski are also included.

Though this book is classified as fiction, the major events and places contained therein are painfully real and provoke an emotional response. I highly recommend The Requisitions for those with an interest in WWII.

[Kate Mele · Rating 5 out of 5]

I highly recommend The Requisitions for readers of historical fiction. Samuél Lopez-Barrantes takes an inventive approach to the genre as he chronicles the Nazi invasion of Lodz, Poland—an approach that beautifully reaffirms the power of the imagination when applied to questions of truth and the nature of good and evil.

The story unfolds in the imagination of the narrator, who as a child pulls The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich from his mother’s bookshelf and his fate is set. He becomes obsessed with the Holocaust and the psychology of genocide. The narrator’s recovery of this childhood memory is the frame through which we bear witness to the horrifying events of the occupation. The novel seamlessly moves between the narrator’s quest for truth about the how and why of Lodz, historical fact, and the lives of three main characters whom the narrator has imagined into being to foster his comprehension of human nature.

At times, the frame seems to dissolve and we are totally in the grip of what happens to these characters. Lopez-Barrantes does not flinch from rendering their tale in visceral detail. Nor does he flinch from interrupting our desire for plot and resolution—placing us on a philosophical precipice that is at once jolting and satisfying.
Kate Mele, Ph.D.

[Yann Rousselot · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is not like any other book you've read about WW2.
Samuél does not shy away from the horror, but further, he does not shy away from what studying this horror has done to him as a human being. This is the true power of meta-fiction, the framing device mirrors the frame of the book itself, the frame that we, readers, hold in our hands (a beautiful print, to boot).
In Carl we see the vulnerability that the author searched for in himself, because war corrupts even good men with the best of intentions.
In Elsa, we see the resourceful saboteur, the spy, la résistance...
In Viktor, we see the philosopher, the spirit of defiance to the bitter end, and how totalitarian regimes are organised to erode human beings down to the lean animal survival instinct that animates us all. How much it takes to resist.
This is a book for contemporary readers, penned with a deceptively casual style but an attention to historical detail and fidelity that gives this subject the weight it deserves.

[Eleanor Anstruther · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Requisitions achieves that rare success of bringing meta-fiction into focus through the lives of those caught up in the Łodz Ghetto of 1939. In the hands of this masterful storyteller, we are walked through this brutal piece of history, carried in and out of the personal while the political rains down upon the cafes, the apartments, the homes and lives of those on both sides of invasion. Samuél Lopez Barrantes has taken this slice of a wider history and given us detail, we are there as the tanks roll in and the Nazi flags are raised over Poland, we take breath as he weaves a modern boy's fascination between the threads of history, and forget to breath as shots ring out through the forest, and a young Lieutenant spits and lights a cigarette. It is no exaggeration to say I could not put it down. Bravo.

[Deirdre Conley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fabulous book written in meta fiction style where the author intertwines speaking directly to the reader as well as advancing a story about survival and resistence in Poland and the Warsaw ghetto during WWII. Lopez-Barrantes is a historian, a philosopher, a poet, a musician, a bright light and a master story teller. Requisitions is beautiful to read and gripping to understand more about the people who lived in the ghetto and the enormous tragedy of that time. Looking forward to reading more books from Lopez-Barrantes and I am enjoying all the postings on his regularly updated substack page. https://ifnotparis.substack.com/

[Mitalee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully written, this historical fiction is a testament to the delicate balance between rigorous research and captivating storytelling. The themes of love, longing, and memory intertwined in a fated history, the narrative compelled me to hope—for the characters, for my own desired outcome, for something beyond what we know. Needless to say, I'm still thinking about it, well after turning the last page.

It’s the kind of book I'll come back to, dog-eared and well-worn—for both its historical references and the author's poetic, vivid imagery.

[Momo De Ville · Rating 5 out of 5]

An oncoming war transforms not only a city but its inhabitants. The Requisitions shows us how people under extreme situations will inevitably leave behind their former selves under a violent regime while attempting to salvage their humanity - some at the cost of their lives.
The War’s reverberations are expressed years later by a narrator who’s reliable enough to unearth and conjure up these lives that appear in full relief.

[Janet Hulstrand · Rating 5 out of 5]

"...a deeply engaging immersion into two of the hardest questions to answer regarding the Holocaust--namely, why? And how?... masterful prose and plotting, and a unique and imaginative approach to the subject, blending personal memoir, historical metafiction, and philosophical inquiry into the deepest recesses of the human soul...sobering, unsettling...but comes out--barely--on the side of a case for hope."

[Augusta Leigh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reminiscent of the classic American novels you were assigned in school, whose importance, magnitude, and timelessness you didn't learn to appreciate until later in adulthood. The Requisitions is at the same time a quick and thrilling summer read, and a deeply layered piece of fiction that is worthy of analysis and re-reading. Timely, poetic, relatable, non-pretentious and an all around great book.

[Ryan Egan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not only is this a work of fiction that masterfully and viscerally places the reader in one of the most devastating moments of modern history, but it also provides an exciting, complex, and captivating read. This story is for fans of historical fiction and WWII-era buffs, but also for anyone who finds value in exploring the moral ambiguities within literature, world history, and our own memories.

[Haylie Villao · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was expecting more, the ending seemed rushed and I want to know what happens in the end. I can only assume the worst, as Carl and the rest were in the town Viktor arrives in. What happens to Rachel and the children? What about Martin, we know he dies, but what happened?? What about Elsa and Viktor, I was hoping to see their reunion?

[Jocelyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Weaves between the past and present so smoothly. While the actions of some during WWII are unforgivable, this book does an excellent job of reminding us that we can all do something even when we don’t think we can.

[Carl Boehm · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Requisitions is brilliant. It is the most engaging, moving and substantial work I've read in a very long time - perhaps ever. I will be reflecting upon what I've just read for a very long time.

[Evan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Requisitions is a fantastic read. The author carefully delivers a sobering yet hopeful glimpse into one of the most devastating times in our history. Highly recommend!

[Phil · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dark and frankly, depressing, but so was the era about which Samuel writes.