Hrst hlíny

by Bram Presser, Olga Bártová (Translator)

Znali jsme jen mlčení. Moji prarodiče z matčiny strany o své zkušenosti z doby druhé světové války nikdy nemluvili. A my si kolem nich utvořili vlastní legendy: on byl v koncentračním táboře učitelem a pomáhal dětem vyplnit čas, než na ně dojde řada; ona dokázala unést železniční pražce, pod jejichž tíhou jiní Židé našli smrt. A s tím jsme si vystačili, věděli jsme, že se dál nemáme ptát.
A tyhle příběhy poté, co zemřeli pouhý měsíc po sobě, bez dalšího zkoumání vstoupily do rodinné paměti. Jenže po čase se v nich začaly objevovat praskliny. Novinový článek, v němž se tvrdilo, že vychází s rozhovoru s ním. Fotografie, na níž se ona drží za rámě cizího muže. E-maily od anglického osmdesátníka, jenž tvrdil, že byl jeho žákem. Hromádka dopisů v krabici od bot ukryté v komoře u její sestry. A příběh jejich životů se nám najednou začal měnit před očima. Bram Presser na základě skutečných faktů a fragmentů historie vystavěl nesmírně působivý román o lásce, paměti, minulosti a identitě.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Jewish, Historical, Holocaust, World War II, Judaism

320 pages, Hardcover

First published August 28, 2017

About the author

Semi-reformed punk rocker, recovering academic, occasional criminal lawyer and one-time cartoon character, Bram Presser was born in Melbourne in 1976. He writes the blog Bait For Bookworms and is a founding member of Melbourne Jewish Book Week. His stories have appeared in Vice Magazine, The Sleepers Almanac, Best Australian Stories, Award Winning Australian Writing and Higher Arc. In 2011, Bram won The Age Short Story Award.

Reviews

[Text Publishing · Rating 5 out of 5]

The following book reviews have been shared by Text Publishing – publisher of The Book of Dirt

‘The Book of Dirt is both a loving, honest portrayal of lives that would have been erased, and an incorporation of the broader lessons of their experience into contemporary mythology. It keeps the discussion about trauma, memory, and intergenerational acts of transfer alive for those generations that follow, that risk forgetting. It is a potent achievement for a debut novel.’
Sydney Review of Books

‘A gripping tale of survival and an absorbing novelisation of his family’s extraordinary lives…Presser fills in the gaps in his grandfather’s story with vivid character studies; together with poignant black and white snapshots, he brings them evocatively to life. His poetic narrative is a perfect foil for the silences of his forbears.’
Toowoomba Chronicle

‘I found Bram Presser’s The Book of Dirt impossible to forget. Penetrating, soulful, and surprisingly welcoming, it reminded me of my own ancestors and how easy it is to sidestep the past.’
Barry Scott, Australian Book Review, 2017 Publisher Picks

‘A beautiful literary mind.’
A.S. Patrić

‘An impressive and captivating story of remembrance, a journey into the past for the sake of deciphering our present.’
Dasa Drndic

‘In The Book of Dirt the fractured lines of memory create a gripping story of survival and love.’
Leah Kaminsky

‘An immense work of love and anger, a book Bram Presser was born to write.’
Joan London

‘Meet Bram Presser, aged five, smoking a cigarette with his grandmother in Prague. Meet Jakub Rand, one of the Jews chosen to assemble the Nazi’s Museum of the Extinct Race. Such details, like lightning flashes, illuminate this audacious work about the author’s search for the grandfather he loved but hardly knew. Working in the wake of writers like Modiano and Safran Foer, Presser brilliantly shows how fresh facts can derail old truths, how fiction can amplify memory. A smart and tender meditation on who we become when we attempt to survive survival.’
Mireille Juchau

‘The Book of Dirt is a grandson’s tender act of devotion, the product of a quest to rescue family voices from the silence, to bear witness, drawing on legend, journey and history, and shaped by extraordinary storytelling.’
Arnold Zable

‘A remarkable tale of Holocaust survival, love and genealogical sleuthing…A beautiful tale that will stay with the reader long after the book’s end.’
Books & Publishing

‘It’s hard not to be captured from the opening epigraph…[A] magnificent ode to all that is lost.’
Longin to Be

‘It is difficult to convey the breadth and nuance of this extraordinary work. It is a book about how history is made—and about who is allowed the privilege to remake it. There are echoes here of Sebald’s biting honesty and Chabon’s long and rewarding vignettes. An absolute pleasure to read.’
Readings

‘The lyrical, impassioned and culturally rich prose of The Book of Dirt, and its moral force, bears echoes of such great Jewish writers as Franz Kafka (Presser inherited his grandfather’s copy of The Trial), Elie Wiesel, Primo Levi, Isaac Bashevis Singer and Cynthia Ozick…It is a major book, and one for the times: while I was reading it, neo-Nazis in America brought fatal violence to Charlottesville, and, in Melbourne, neo-Nazis placed posters in schools calling for the killing of Jews to be legalised…The Book of Dirt is a courageous work, as necessary for us to read as it was for Presser to write.’ 
Saturday Paper

‘As in Sebald’s prose narratives, Presser’s novel inhabits and the dynamic region between fiction and non-fiction.’
Australian Book Review

‘Presser blurs the boundaries of fact and fiction in a compelling way…A wonderful and original book, told in rich, lyrically beautiful prose that is laden with history and cultural meaning.’
Good Reading

‘A combination of homage, mystery, family history and a sepia-toned love story…The Book of Dirt is magnificent.’
ANZ LitLovers

‘A heartfelt and original attempt to bridge the ever-growing gaps between history, memory and silence…Its heart beats so earnestly, and so loud…What Presser has produced is a meditation on the ethics of storytelling, of the duties we owe to the people whose stories we tell, and to the people whose stories we don’t.’
Australian

‘Always surprising and beautifully complex, and both deft and sensitive in its handling of its intertwined narratives and materials. It is an incredibly affecting book, one that lingers long after reading—and a remarkably assured debut.’
Age

[Cass Moriarty · Rating 5 out of 5]

The cover of The Book of Dirt (Text Publishing 2017), the debut novel by Bram Presser, features a ring – a plain gold band – surrounded by a small pile of dirt. The ring – and the dirt – may look inconsequential, but in fact both represent significant themes of belonging, survival and connection. The Book of Dirt is Bram Presser’s story of his own Jewish history. He has taken family tales and legends, and woven these together with extensive archival research, to create a novel that is part fact, part fiction; part remembered, part imagined.
The book assembles a large cast of characters but focusses primarily on Bram Presser’s grandfather, Jakub Rand, and his grandmother, Dasa Roubicek. These two families experienced the worst of the Holocaust, and many family members did not survive. For those who did, the pain and emotional suffering of that period ran deep in their veins.
From the beginning, we get a sense that this will be a story with a difference. We start in a small village somewhere on the borders of Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, and as we are introduced to each of the villagers and given a vignette of their simple lives, we are also provided with an account of how they will prematurely perish, most because of the conflict. This straightforward and vivid representation – an entire life, there and gone in an instant – makes for sobering reading, and sets the scene for a story that is ultimately about the transience of life, the inevitability of death, and the arbitrariness of one person’s survival over another.
Jakub Rand, imprisoned by the Nazis in the Theresienstadt concentration camp, is forced to classify Jewish books and artefacts for the Museum of the Extinct Race. In one holy book, he finds a hollowed space containing a small pile of dirt. The simultaneous story is of Frantiska Roubickova, regretting her decision to convert from Catholicism to Judaism, and despairing about the fates of her husband and two of her daughters (one being Dasa) who have been deported. Bram Presser grew up hearing stories about the tragedy of his forebears, about the losses they endured, and who survived (and how), and it is armed with this mostly oral knowledge that he goes in search of answers to his many questions. The truth, it seems, is slippery, and official records elusive or inconclusive. But nevertheless, the book is punctuated with photocopies of documents and letters, of photographs and maps, of correspondence between him and various authorities, augmented by other documents that he has fictionalised to ornament the story. He has taken rumour and legend, family lore and oral histories, and attempted to substantiate where he could with facts and evidence; the remainder he has reimagined as to how he believes the story could have unfolded.
He writes about the process of correction, and this entire book is a labour of correction, of hearing stories, confirming facts, uncovering alternate versions, correcting the sway of the story as he goes. You can see the effort he has expended in attempting to find the truth; the love between his grandparents shines through like a beacon; his anger at the senseless violence and annihilation of war is strong.
In the opening pages, he says ‘Within a few generations almost all of us will have been forgotten. Those who are not will have no bearing on how we are remembered, who we once were. We will not be there to protest, to correct.’ How true. And yet by writing this story, Bram Presser has determined that the fate of certain individuals – his grandfather, his grandmother – will not be forgotten and consigned to history’s amnesia, but will remain alive on the page, the written word ensuring that their lives are remembered, all the messy, dirty and harsh reality as well as the hopeful, persistent instinct of survival. In setting out to recover his grandfather, Bram Presser has dug his archaeological tools into the unsettling layers of our history and carefully brushed the dirt from precious artefacts from the past. He has delved into this mission open to any possibilities. And like many accounts of the terrible crimes of the Holocaust, this book speaks not only of the horrors of that time, but of the stories of great strength and survival, peppered by small acts of human kindness, that remind us of the resilience and courage of ordinary people.

[Michael Livingston · Rating 4 out of 5]

A moving and enthralling piece of work - part family memoir, part novel, it's as heartbreaking as you'd imagine.

[Marianne · Rating 4 out of 5]

“I clicked on the most obvious icon, the Yad Vashem Shoah Names Database and typed in Jakub Rand. They all jumped out at me at once, an explosion of Jakub Rands, as if I had released their souls from the dusty white box that whirred innocuously beside me.”

The Book Of Dirt is the first novel by Australian author, Bram Presser. In 1996, Jakub Rand lost the will to live, mere weeks after his wife, Dasa died. Both were Jews, from Prague; both had lived in the Theresienstadt ghetto during the German occupation of Czechoslovakia; both survived a period in Birkenau-Auschwitz concentration camp. Ten years after their deaths, their grandson, Bram Presser sets out to explore his grandfather’s wartime experience.

With scant details to begin his search, Presser contacts relevant bodies to learn about Jakub’s role in a group that sorted Jewish artefacts and books, the Talmudkommando, for a Nazi project called the Museum of the Extinct Race, something that had been mentioned in an inaccurate Jewish Newspaper article. He visits family in Prague and discovers traces of his grandmother’s wartime activities of which he was unaware.

Presser includes an array of helpful items that lend authenticity: photographs, a Guide to Czech Pronunciation, a Glossary of Hebrew and Czech words, and several maps. His Character list assists with the many similar names, and it’s a novel in which the author and his extended family play starring roles. From a childhood memory of his grandfather running his fingers through a patch of dirt, Presser conjures into his story a golem. With so little fact to go on, the reader may well ask “What is fact and what is fiction?” The author’s Note on Historical Sources goes some way to separating the two. This is a moving tale of survival with some fascinating aspects.

[Hazel Edwards · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘Faction’ is the dramatic technique of blending facts into readable stories, especially where there may be gaps of ignorance on the part of potential audiences or it’s just not possible to find out.
‘The Book of Dirt’ is a significant work of faction. The title refers to the little that is left of even a significant life unless memories are captured in artforms and passed on. Presser uses the term ‘golem’ and applies it as a symbol in his novel and his quest for his grandfather’s past.
Presser is examining a universal dilemma, of family moral inheritances but within the Jewish cultural context.
I’m not Jewish. I know and admire Bram Presser as a compassionate man and good wordsmith, so my review comes from a different perspective: the mainstream reader who is also a writer aware of the challenges of family histories.
As an author, I’m conscious of the difficulties of crafting material which some readers may consider contentious, especially in dealing with how ancestors may have acted or even re-acted in extreme circumstances.
Structurally, the real story is the author’s poignant quest for his grandfather’s history within the Holocaust survivor conflict and the universal challenge of facing facts which may dispute family myths.
My qualm about this BIG novel:
It assumes familiarity with the language of a culture and doesn’t always explain the context for a reader who is outside that community. Some books are legitimately therapy for the writer, but others need to craft for an audience.
‘Holocast’ history can be overwhelming and participants, especially victims, cannot speak. So their descendants have that role, but what should they say and in what format? And to whom?
Few know their real families’ past beyond a generation back. Fragmentary anecdotes. Most families are refugees from elsewhere. And if grandparents have lived through the destruction of war, records are lost. Others may never have known their relatives who died in concentration camps. Children and grandchildren of survivors have special challenges.
Most biographers face the problem of what to include from the mass of hard accumulated data, and what to leave out. The inclusion of Presser’s rare family photos help personalize ‘The Book of Dirt’. Presser also includes a Guide to Czech Pronunciation, a Glossary of Hebrew and Czech words, and several maps at the back. These are helpful but often read afterwards.
In Jewish folklore, a golem is an animated anthropomorphic being that is magically created entirely from inanimate matter (specifically clay or mud). The word was used to mean an amorphous, unformed material in medieval writing. Frankly I had to check that out. Presser has used the golem symbol in his novel but his story has been crafted across years of research and re-writing.
It is not amorphous and unformed.
Passages are starkly poetic, especially the opening. And a wealth of careful research and much thought is evident in a range of poignantly written vignettes and cameos set in complex politically changing scenarios. Who shares? Who collaborates? How accurate are records? Whose story survives the bureaucracy of death? Is fear a stronger motive than love?
But the cast is so large, it’s hard for a reader to track the connections and sort the timing and locations. Despite the two pages of cast at the beginning, and maps and notes at the end, it would have been helpful to have locations on chapters. But then the writer’s point is that those villages, towns and camps have changed their names, labels, allegiances and many are now extinct. Hence the reason for this book.
Presser is a persistent researcher. His ‘quest’ for facts provides the heroic journey of the historical detective. That is the real story.
What makes the book significant is Bram Presser’s attempt to come to terms with how quickly memories can be lost. There are some highly quotable philosophical observations. And some poetically written passages. Memorable scenes. But it is the compassion which indicates a significant writer.
Presser has that.
I would have liked more structure, so that it was possible to work out where and who and when. At times, the family connections and time jumps are confusing. But that is what Presser is also exploring. The challenge of documenting the unthinkable and the untraceable.#

[Nell Beaudry McLachlan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bram Presser's The Book of Dirt is part memoir, part novel, part genealogical archeology. He scrapes away at the layers of myth and legend to come to terms with, and reveal, the time spent in Theresienstadt and Auschwitz-Birkenau by his grandfather and grandmother, Jakub Rand and Daša Roubíčková. It is a moving work, layered, piecing together family story with Jewish myth and legend. I am hard-pressed to say more about the work, because I feel, as an archivist and librarian privileged to work within the Jewish community, that it is a work so important that a simple review does not to it credit. The mixture of archival research, family material, and fictionalized storytelling is compelling, and a little intoxicating - Presser breathes life into history all while pointing at its abilities to fail us, and at our abilities to fail it. We lose history easily, let it fall to pieces within the span of a generation, and leave those who follow us to piece together stories that might have otherwise been passed along mostly intact had we had the courage to ask. The story of Jakub and Daša is remarkable, a compelling must-read for everybody.

[Adam Rapoport · Rating 5 out of 5]

That was brilliant.

Complex without being convoluted, moving without being maudlin, the book worked for me on a number of levels, not least the prose, which was rich and literary without at all being a Nabakovian wankfest. In other words, it was a servant to the plot, characters and atmosphere, without fanfare or self-consciousness. Unlike most of my reviews.

The attempt to interweave history, memory, investigation and myth was probably more likely to go horribly wrong than right, but the fact that it succeeded is likely testament in part to the author’s authentic grappling with the subject matter, appreciation of fidelity to those who were silenced, and skill and determination to uncover and put the pieces together.

Riveting and intriguing, subtle and stirring, The Book of Dirt was compelling to read and will linger long after you put it down.

[Tundra · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautiful tribute to his family. Presser has delicately woven fiction into his historical research and managed to maintain a sense of integrity which ensures his family will not be lost to memory.

[Veronica (Honey Roselea Reads) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this for my English class that talks about film and literature of the Holocaust. I found The Book of Dirt quite interesting but definitely very heavy. That being said, I am focusing on a specific thing in The Book of Dirt so perhaps my focus was on things that are specific. But, this story, about family and about the past, it was heavy to get through. I'm glad to have read this knowing I don't read a lot about the past and about the Holocaust.

Find me on:
My Blog | My BookTube | My Book Club | Instagram | Twitter

[Ari · Rating 5 out of 5]

Typically I don't write reviews. Most of the books I cherish already have hundreds or thousands of them already - so what can I add? But I'm making an exception for the Book of Dirt, because it's a new release from a new author, and it is unquestionably brilliant, and (for this alone it warrants a review) it is unique.

What starts out as something of an autobiographical detective story - the author trying to sort out what happened to his grandfather during the Holocaust, and his part in the so-called Museum of the Extinct Race - develops into something more complex as Presser despairs of ever actually finding the answers he seeks.

Like so many generations before him, faced with the task of explaining the inexplicable, Presser resorts to fable and prayer. However, it is important to note that Presser's recurring prayer is ultimately not so much a mourner's kaddish as a prayer of redemption, deliverance and bittersweet exodus from a world that, in his own words, has "ceased to exist".

The characters and events with which Presser populates that world will stay with you long after you finish The Book of Dirt.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

Deeply moving in parts, and the author’s love for his grandparents and great-grandmother is touching. And it has some beautiful passages. But very episodic and at times highly confusing in its structure. It chopped and changed between events too often and was at times hard to follow.

[Lesley Moseley · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sorry to say , I had skipped too much of the 'golem' and just couldn't work out who was really his grandfather. DNF.

[Wendy · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was an undisciplined narrative, part fact, part fiction, with chapters that chopped and changed characters and time periods mid-chapter. I had to work hard to figure out who I was reading about and what time period we were in. Maddening.

Also, in his search to fill in his grand-parents story of survival, an almost impossible task, he writes in a circuitous and slow-paced style, which soon felt like a manipulation to me;" if you keep reading you might find out something about how these people survived a nightmare." But we don't find out anything except what we already know: that life is full of horrible suffering, there are cruel people and kind people, there are lucky people and unlucky people, etc. His family's stories are achingly sad, but the structure of the book and the writing let those stories down.

I must be spoiled. I have read hundreds of books about the Holocaust. Primo Levi's If This is Man, Elie Weisel's Night, Art Spiegelman's Maus, Boyne's The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, Treblinka, East of Time etc. Each one of these books put me inside the HORROR, broke my heart, the people in them had flesh and blood. You become invested in their stories.

That was missing for me in this book. There was a REMOVE, a distance. A talking "about" rather than a "bringing forth". This personal search soon felt tedious and self-absorbed to me. His style self-indulgent and seemingly a deliberate attempt to obfuscate any possibility of a cohesive story.

Not for me.

[Andrew Harris · Rating 5 out of 5]

A masterpiece of third-generation Survivor storytelling. A delicately wrought take on the individual nuance of Holocaust experience and the tendency of the passage of time and retelling to neglect that nuance in favour of a simplistic, monolothic and homogeneous communal memory, which in turn eventually denies us the truth. Careful and instructive handling of the Diasporism vs Zionism dialectic contemporary to the historical narrative. Bram's writing channels the characters of his ancestors' lost world, in the words of a new, uniquely Melbourne voice, resonating with the richest tones of European literature. Couldn't put it down.

[Hermien · Rating 5 out of 5]

I know part of the story is the writer's interpretation but it worked for me.

[Edite · Rating 5 out of 5]

Could not put it down. Loved every page.

[Joey Gremillion · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superbly written. Mr. Presser’s narrative is stunning

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the most poignant things I've ever seen is a matchbox filled with soil in the Jewish Holocaust Centre in Elsternwick.  Signage explains that this soil from the Nazi death camp where her mother was murdered, is the only token that her daughter has in remembrance.  She has no photos, nothing in her mother's handwriting, nothing that she ever wore, nothing that she ever treasured, no family recipes, nothing made by her mother's hands.  In a museum that has an emotional impact on all who visit, this exhibit is powerful: the existence of a woman that the Nazis sought to obliterate, can never be forgotten by anyone who sees that soil.

Bram Presser is a Melbourne author, and he would certainly have seen that exhibit too.  Although his grandparents were Holocaust survivors, he also faced the question of an unknowable past, and he has also, as an act of defiance and homage, refused to let that past fade away.  Instead, Presser has used as a literary device the ancient Jewish golem, a clay creature magically brought to life with words - so that his grandparents' lives can be told.

Within a few generations almost all of us will be forgotten.  Those who are not will have no bearing on how we are remembered, who we once were.  We will not be there to protest, to correct.  In the end we might exist only as a prop in someone else's story: a plot device, a golem.

But Jakub Rand and his wife Daša are much more than mere plot devices in The Book of Dirt.  When a previously unknown story about his grandfather surfaces after Jakub's death in 1996, here in Melbourne and shortly after the death of Daša, Presser set out on a quest to find out more.  But the trail eventually went cold so the book blends fiction and memoir to recreate their story.  It is, he says in Chapter One:

This is a book of memories, some my own, some acquired and some, I suppose, imagined.

It begins with a warning, almost everyone you care about in this book is dead. (p.9).

As he shows in his choice of epigraph, he writes in full awareness of his own temerity:
We're constantly correcting, and correcting ourselves, most rigorously because we recognise at every moment that we did it all wrong (wrote it, thought it, made it all wrong), acted all wrong, how we acted all wrong, that everything to this point in time is a falsification, so we correct this falsification, and then we correct the correction of this falsification, and we correct the result of the correction of a correction, and so forth.... (Thomas Bernard, Correction).

So.  The book is prefaced by a cast of characters, some of whom are identified as members of the author's family past and present day, and others - such as Štěpánka Tičková, who turns out to be a garrulous and spiteful tattletale, must surely be a marvellous invention. 

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2017/11/11/t...

[Gilion Dumas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Australian author Bram Presser creates his grandparents' Holocaust story out of family history, imagination, old photographs, and ephemera in his heart-warming first novel, The Book of Dirt.

Growing up, Presser’s grandparents never talked about their Holocaust experiences. After they died, Presser read a newspaper article claiming that his grandfather had been selected by the Nazis to be the literary curator of Hitler’s Museum of the Extinct Race, which inspired him to learn more and eventually lead to this book.

The Book of Dirt is historical fiction set in the context of the Holocaust, but it should appeal to any reader interested in memory, identity, and family storytelling. It is a novel about how we know the people we love, and how we recreate their lives in memory.

[Robert Lukins · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a beautiful and unique thing this is.

[Corinne · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this book very confusing unfortunately and it was a bit of a struggle to finish. I lost the trail of the plot and the cast of characters. A mixture of fiction and non fiction but I wasn’t clear which was which. The book commences with a search to find out the truth of his grandfather’s experience of WW2 and stories of his life but I am not sure we actually discovered the answers .

At the end of the book is a glossary of Czech words and Jewish terms. Obviously would have helped if this was at the start!
Otherwise there were some interesting vignettes but not a cohesive read.

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Surviving a traumatic event such as the Holocaust is an incredible feat and story by itself, but what author Bram Presser has done is weaved personal family history and engaging fiction into something that transcends the normal historical fiction genre itself. The author knew that his grandfather had been in a concentration camp and had been a teacher there and survived, but then a newspaper article illuminates a more interesting (and possibly unnerving) narrative. Setting out to the uncover the truth, Presser takes his findings and presents scenarios about both of his grandparent's experiences in one of history's darkest periods.

What makes this novel work is the blending of painstaking research and vibrant characters in the most desolate times and situations. From the Catholic great grandmother turned Jewish (and having to live with the effects as the madness unfolded) to his grandfather forced to take part in verifying sacred texts for the Museum of the Ancient Race for the Nazis, the characters are of full of life and personality and portray their struggles very effectively. Learning about the aforementioned Talmudkommando and what being a "privileged Jew" actually meant were some of the novels most engaging moments. With a prose that benefits very well from the impact of the Jewish folklore and terminology peppered throughout the writing, this is a captivating meshing of facts and storytelling that morphs into something quite fascinating and entertaining.

A very big thank you to NetGalley, Bram Presser, and Text Publishing Company for an advance reader copy of this book in exchange for an honest, unbiased review.

[Sara Vidal · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought a copy when I went to the launch last year and read it in 3 days. Yes I couldn't put it down. Then, swamped by mixed emotions, I did not feel I could review it. (Jealousy?!?) My book also of holocaust history was soon to be launched and I had taken a different approach. Interestingly on reflection the parts in the book that I related to most were what I had cut out of my book as superfluous to the telling of my parents' story - the uncoverings, dead-ends, surprise discoveries - ie the 'true' stuff. Bram's imagined parts and people - not so much. That is why I give it four* not five. But, and this is a big but, I am a somewhat jaded reader of 'fiction' especially holocaust fiction (just been around too-long?). I have spent 25 years researching and writing for my book and I prefer my holocaust mostly factual because this is so close to me that I tend to find fault in any divergence, for example I am not a fan of 'The Book Thief' and I hated 'The Boy in the Striped Pygamas'. There are exceptions: I adore for example 'Sara's Key' by Tatiana de Rosnay and if one can 'adore' such violence, Tarantino's 'Inglorious Basterds'; revenge in that case is indeed sweet. It has taken me nearly a year to post a review of 'The Book of Dirt'; the story remains as vivid to me as when I read it. This book is indeed a 'must read'. Bram has told his grandfather's story with brilliant imagination and love.

[Fiona Blond · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are moments when you read something so powerful but all consuming of your heart and spirit that it takes you time to come back to the real world. The Book of Dirt exported me to the place of horror and perseverance that was the war camp of the 1940's. The story was not shocking as the facts are something we are all familiar with but the storylines and way Bram Presser writes is mesmerising. I wanted to let the story go, move on to a more fun novel but I knew that I couldn't leave it alone. I needed to feel the pain of the storyline and the genuineness of the events that occurred.
I want to read whatever Bram writes, now and forever as I believe he has the touch to get into your heart and reach out to us.

[Nathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Disclaimer: I know Bram
But also: Within ten pages I completed forgot I knew the author of this book

Formally playful, simultaneously tender and charged with a righteous anger. I’m floored by the soul of this book, by the yearning for history and the bitter strength of survival. We are built upon a foundation of narratives that we can’t know.

A truly beautiful book, this is going to stay with me for a very long time.

[Shaun Mason · Rating 5 out of 5]

Have a read of this story - it grapples with the gaps and the omissions of the past and the difficulties we have in filling them and making sense of them. I loved it.

[Christine · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author's journey into family history of Holocaust survivors seems difficult but absolutely worthwhile. A well written book of facts mixed with memory and imagination results in a tale of the past shaping the future for all.

[Callum Macdonald · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Book of Dirt is an immense work - moving, powerful and deeply personal. Congratulations to Bram Presser in achieving this wonderful novel - it will be remembered by many.

[Mandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bram Presser’s quest to find out about his grandparents, who survived the Holocaust and moved to Australia, began when a couple of years after their death he read a newspaper article describing something his grandfather had possibly been involved with whilst in captivity. Presser thought he knew his grandfather, but maybe he didn’t, especially as his grandparents never spoke about what had happened to them. This book, a blend of fact and fiction, is the result of Pressers’ research and it’s a powerful and memorable tale. He weaves his personal family history into a wider Holocaust narrative to good effect, although I sometimes felt uneasy with the blend of fact and fiction. He has to reimagine his grandparents’ story and does so using a mix of known fact and Jewish and family myth. The book jumps about in time and place, and is quite fragmented, and I could have done with a bit more help with the placing and context of the different chapters. There are many Holocaust narratives and this is certainly up there with the best, but on a personal level I didn’t find it as immersive as some. Nevertheless, Presser’s exploration of trauma, memory, family and truth largely succeeds, and the book is a significant tribute to his grandparents and their fellow Holocaust victims.

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

An incredible literary achievement from a brilliantly talented Australian author. Presser writes with a unique flair and skill, uncovering the personal and the universal. His prose has a timeless quality that is without affectation. An original and singular voice casting new light on a tragic period in history. While the catalogue of existing fiction about the Holocaust is vast, the Book of Dirt covers aspects and events that may be unfamiliar to many, in a highly original way.