The Man in the Box

by Thomas Moran

Niki Lukasser can no longer deny the impact on her sheltered teenage world of World War II when the Jewish doctor who had saved her life years before comes seeking refuge with her family in Austria. Reprint.

Genres: Fiction, World War II, Holocaust, Historical Fiction, War, Historical, Coming Of Age

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

Journalist and author. Lives in New York, Woodstock, NY, and Europe. Also writes under the pseudonym of Michael Crow.

Reviews

[Rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book starts, "During the war, we kept our Jew in a box."

This is one of my favorite books. It's is evocative, terrifying, gripping, melancholy and miraculous. The capacity for evil, love, and growth is explored. Never saccharine, and deeply meaningful, this is a wonderful book. It's about a Jewish doctor who is hidden by a family, whose son he once saved. His only contact is the son and his blind girlfriend. The novel is about the doctor and the teenagers, as they grow and he regresses from lack of contact with the world. The writing is powerful and starkly haunting.

[Rajvi · Rating 4 out of 5]

arrived due to an interest in a historical fiction novel set during world war II. left with the start of my sexual awakening

Edit 1:
Okay I only now just realized that the author had unfortunately passed away. This is honestly one of my favourite books of all time, and so I’m going to give this a reread and write a proper review

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like this book a lot. The only thing that bothered me was that I could never figure out if Niki was a boy or a girl. It was sort of ambiguous, I though.

[Rich · Rating 4 out of 5]

A work of fiction about a Jewish doctor hidden by an Austrian family. The small town of Sankt Vero is the setting for this story told by an adolescent boy, Niki. Trying to maintain some kind of normalcy surrounded by extraordinary circumstances and unique characters leads to a very interesting tale.

[Linzi Farris · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is about the Holocaust and a Jewish man the Nazis kept in a box. It is a realistic fiction book with some fantastical pieces. This would need be read to an upper elementary student because some of the issues are more mature. However, I do believe it is a good book to read because it deals with history, culture, and how to treat others.

[Caroline · Rating 4 out of 5]

Throughout the book I couldn't help but be amazed how the characters seemed to think the Jew should be grateful, ignoring the fact this man was living in a coffin-sized boxed, unable to move about, consisting off of a potato or thin soups each day, unable to bathe, get fresh air, stay warm in winter, cool in summer... At least his ending is as happy as a WWII Jewish man's story could be....

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

The characters were perfect.

[Daniel Evans · Rating 4 out of 5]

recommendable

[Beth Shields-Szostak]

1st edition

[Jean · Rating 4 out of 5]

another holocaust book, but really good

[Bucket · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not at all what I expected. This isn't really about the titular man in the box, but rather about a 13-year-old who is coming to terms with identity, sex, love and approaching adulthood. He lives in a tiny town in Austria that while impacted by WW2 (there is a Jewish man in a box in his barn, after all) is actually so small and obscure that the impacts are relatively few. There are food shortages, a few young soldiers who bunk with families in the community, and a young man who returns from the war wounded. But above all there is Niki, his love and sexual desire for his blind best friend Sigi (among others) and the stories about love and sometimes sex they hear from Dr. Weiss, the man in the box.

I know many reviews of this book found the lack of putting the story in its historical context to be its weakness. And maybe it was. But it also felt realistic in a way, that a young teen would only know or think as much about the national political context as he's forced to. That said, it is odd that adult Niki who is telling the story doesn't layer in that context. We hear only young Niki's perspective.

Niki is carefully never gendered in the book, though all the signs are there that he is at least assigned male at birth. The way his father brings him into business situations make this clear, but the author adds lots of confounding elements (ex. Niki spends lots of time alone with Sigi, a young girl, including up in her bedroom). There is also the mysterious moment that Sigi touches Niki between his legs and the language is purposefully obfuscating: "Then Sigi touches me between my legs, the tenderest touch in the tenderest spot... And with the tips of her fingers, Sigi sweetly ravishes my certain, fallow world." While sort of interesting, there is no conclusion or meaning made of this theme. What was the point?

Another deeper theme the author picked up but ultimately set down unchanged was the idea of whether Niki's family is saving Dr. Weiss or imprisoning him. ("Save? Is that what we're doing? Or are we killing him in the slowest way?")

One interesting quote from Gregor, a young adult who returns from the war wounded: "I admit I liked to blow things up. It's very exciting. It's like being a little boy with not only permission but encouragement to be as bad as you please. You can be so bad. You can be bad until you make yourself sick if you want. But you never imagine that day will come. You never imagine that one day you might be the one to get blown up."

[Genai Bednar · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the third book I've read recently about WWII and all have been from the perspective of non -Jewish Germans who resisted the Nazis in some way, which I think is odd. At any rate, I liked this one more because the characters were more nuanced. The narrator was often more focused on regular life and his own love interest than on the war and the "man in the box", which rang true of human nature. As did the varying mental state of the Jewish man who was being hidden, and how it often seemed more like being imprisoned.

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

While this is well written and an engaging coming of age story the backdrop of Nazi Germany doesn't seem to fit. I understand the appeal of having this playout in a backwater barely touched by the war so that we can see an almost normal coming of age experience, but it just plays flat in its execution. The tension of the war and of hiding a Jew from the holocaust seem more as an inconvenience then an actual trial of morality.

[Elizabeth · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was so excited about this book I set it aside so I would be able to dedicate more time to it's storyline. Unfortunately I only set myself up for disappointment. The Title storyline was interesting, & I can understand the need for an outside storyline because how many interesting pages could be expected from the point of one man trapped in a box for day after day, week after week, year after year? However the juxtaposed life of the fellow villagers far to often turned to orgy-esque escapades that I found not only boring, but increasingly unnecessary to the story. Yes this is, in actuality, the story of a pre-pubescent boy whose family hides a Jewish man from the Nazi's, I understand he would be dealing with issues of his own sexuality, but so did Anne Frank & in that esteemed novel it still managed to further the story rather than hinder it.

[Carolyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Writers continue to find new ways to write about the Holocaust.

The man in the box is a Jew, Dr Weiss, who is hidden by a family in an Austrian village in recognition of the fact that he saved the life of the son of the family some years before. The son Niki, now 13, is given responsibility for taking food to Dr Weiss each day. He shares his secret with his blind friend, Sigi and together they come to know the Dr’s story and begin to understand the complexity of people’s humanity, inhumanity and relationships.

While set around themes of isolation and persecution, this is above all a sensitively written coming of age story.

[Mel · Rating 2 out of 5]

The story of the man in the box is so secondary to the obsession of the pubescent children of the village. Is there really nothing else to do than to play with themselves and be concerned with who had sex with whom? I was terribly disappointed with this aspect of the book.
Some of the writing is good. One can feel compassion and sympathy for the main character when an accident happens. But the good parts are so far and few between all the sex that the book didn't become interesting until page 141. If I were to recommend it I suggest starting at that page.

[Galicius · Rating 1 out of 5]

Hard going with this one already from chapter 2. It seems there is more about some young teenagers than about the man in the box. It doesn't look like I will get very far with this though it was highly recommended to me.

I made it through the self-appointed requirement of reading the first 100 pages of this difficult slogging-through and called it quits.

[Laurie Jameson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was not the type of story I was expecting. Instead of being about "The Man in the Box", it was more about a teenage boy's coming of age. It was still a good read, just not what I thought it would be.

[Gerry Durisin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Holocaust era Austrian family hides a Jewish Doctor, and two teenagers are his only contact with the outside world. Disappointingly narrated only from kids’ view, with little insight into the doctor’s perspective.

[Merideth Lee · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is more a coming of age story than the story of the "Jew in the box". Moved along quickly and easy to read.

[Sharon Lee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sadly o feel this storyline has been written many times and whilst I enjoyed reading this it wasn't brilliant enough for me to rate it higher - nothing new in its pages.