It's here! Browse the 2024 Penguin Christmas gift guide
Landscapes of the Metropolis of Death

Landscapes of the Metropolis of Death

Reflections on Memory and Imagination

Summary

Otto Dov Kulka's memoir of a childhood spent in Auschwitz is a literary feat of astounding emotional power, exploring the permanent and indelible marks left by the Holocaust

Winner of the JEWISH QUARTERLY-WINGATE PRIZE 2014

As a child, the distinguished historian Otto Dov Kulka was sent first to the ghetto of Theresienstadt and then to Auschwitz. As one of the few survivors he has spent much of his life studying Nazism and the Holocaust, but always as a discipline requiring the greatest coldness and objectivity, with his personal story set to one side. But he has remained haunted by specific memories and images, thoughts he has been unable to shake off.

Translated by Ralph Mandel.

'The greatest book on Auschwitz since Primo Levi ... Kulka has achieved the impossible' - the panel of Judges, Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Prize

Reviews

  • The greatest book on Auschwitz since Primo Levi ... Kulka has achieved the impossible: a mythological and strangely beautiful new language for living with Auschwitz ... a book as mighty as it is modest
    Panel of Judges, Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Prize

About the author

Otto Dov Kulka

Otto Dov Kulka was born in Czechoslovakia in 1933, and died in Israel in 2021. He was Professor Emeritus at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Learn More

Sign up to the Penguin Newsletter

For the latest books, recommendations, author interviews and more