New chapter in Holocaust saga

AUTHOR Morris Gleitzman readily admits that he emerged from his school years with the view that history was “a bit dry and distant”, comprising largely of dates and facts with limited relevance to the modern day.

But now, as he continues to delve further into the life of Felix, the young protagonist in his popular series set around the Holocaust, he is absorbed in what history has to offer.

“Through the writing of these books, I’ve really made up for a big deficiency in my own life,” says Gleitzman. “I’ve discovered what a vital living and hugely important part of human existence is our past. And how thrilling and dismaying, but essentially alive, is the process of connecting with it.”

It was in 2006 that Gleitzman wrote Once, the first book in the Holocaust series aimed at a young audience. It struck an immediate chord and sold more than 130,000 copies. And with the subsequent books in the series – Then, Now and After – that total has exceeded 300,000 copies in Australia.

They have also enjoyed international success and have been published in 10 languages.

The latest book in the series is Soon, which documents Felix’s plight after World War II has ended. It follows on from the release of After in 2012, which at the time Gleitzman envisioned would be the last in the series.

“But what I’d discovered through the many years of research that I’d done was that, of course, continental Europe did not magically turn back into a problem-free place the day after the war ended,” Gleitzman explains.

“I suddenly realised that there was a huge challenge just ahead for Felix that I hadn’t understood the full import of … I suddenly realised there was another book to write.”

And so came Soon, the fifth in what Gleitzman likes to call a “family of books”. A family rather than a series because he has written them in a manner which allows them to be read in any order.

Released in June, Soon sees Felix and his adult friend and protector Gabriek still struggling to survive in devastated Poland a few months after the war has finished. They have made a secret home for themselves in a bombed-out building, and although it is important to remain hidden, Felix is not one to live a self-interested life, and challenges and adventures ensue.

A novel for children set around the Holocaust has attracted some criticism from concerned parents over the years, but Gleitzman has seen a positive reception from young readers.

“What I’ve heard is that often as the books were being read, shared, and talked about afterwards, the adults realised that they needn’t have felt so anxious,” says Gleitzman.

“That in fact the capacity of young readers is to embrace a story on all levels, to connect at a very deep emotional level with the characters and their journey, and for that deep emotional connection to be in no way a traumatic or a negative or a damaging thing.

“For it in fact has given rise to conversations and thoughts … That to me is absolutely what stories are about.”

While many of Gleitzman’s earlier books have a much more obviously comedic surface – Worry Warts and Bumface for example – Gleitzman says the crux of every book he writes is exploring an issue of importance in the life of the main character.

“The stories that grow out of real, hugely significant, often terrible parts of real human history and experience, obviously carry a kind of weight that a purely imagined story never can,” says Gleitzman.

“All fiction that grows out of real, lived experience by people one didn’t know personally, carries with it huge ethical, moral responsibilities to honour and somehow do justice to those experiences.

“And to make fiction as immediate and real and visceral and emotionally connecting as fiction needs to be, while at the same time acknowledging that there is a gulf always between the fiction and those real, lived experiences that can only truly be known to the people who lived them.”

A challenging balance indeed, but Gleitzman does not look set to stop just yet. He would like to write another book focusing on Felix’s migration to Australia, and complete it with a book that sees Felix returning to his roots in Poland.

“I’ve always had a strong desire, which has pretty much turned into a plan now, to write a final book in this group, back with Felix as an elderly man. I would like to take him back to Poland where we first met him,” Gleitzman reveals.

“If that comes to fruition, that would make seven books. And that would definitely be it. I think we can say, post-Harry Potter, that seven is the new trilogy. And that I think will do me and Felix!”

While working on the earlier Felix books, Gleitzman researched his own family history. One of his grandfathers was a Polish Jew from Krakow who left for London in the early 1900s. He married a Jewish woman, but she became ill and died, and then he married a non-Jewish woman. Gleitzman’s father was one of the children from the second marriage.

Gleitzman was born in England in 1953 and grew up in London, emigrating to Australia with his family at age 16. He worked as a TV comedy writer before publishing his first book, The Other Facts of Life in 1985, followed two years later by his successful book Two Weeks With the Queen.

Gleitzman decided he wanted to write novels, and by the time he had published his fourth book, he realised that sales and royalties were sufficient to support his family as a full-time writer.

“One of the main things I like [about being an author] is being able to make my imagination my workplace, because I think it’s the most interesting and exciting workplace of all,” he says.

“And I feel very lucky that I’ve been able to spend most of my working life in that particular workplace.”

Soon is published by Penguin Australia, $19.99 (rrp).

REPORT by Phoebe Roth

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