Freud's Sister
A Novel
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
The award-winning international sensation that poses the question: Was Sigmund Freud responsible for the death of his sister in a Nazi concentration camp?
The boy in her memories who strokes her with the apple, who whispers to her the fairy tale, who gives her the knife, is her brother Sigmund.
Vienna, 1938: With the Nazis closing in, Sigmund Freud is granted an exit visa and allowed to list the names of people to take with him. He lists his doctor and maids, his dog, and his wife's sister, but not any of his own sisters. The four Freud sisters are shuttled to the Terezín concentration camp, while their brother lives out his last days in London.
Based on a true story, this searing novel gives haunting voice to Freud's sister Adolfina—“the sweetest and best of my sisters”—a gifted, sensitive woman who was spurned by her mother and never married. A witness to her brother's genius and to the cultural and artistic splendor of Vienna in the early twentieth century, she aspired to a life few women of her time could attain.
From Adolfina's closeness with her brother in childhood, to her love for a fellow student, to her time with Gustav Klimt's sister in a Vienna psychiatric hospital, to her dream of one day living in Venice and having a family, Freud's Sister imagines with astonishing insight and deep feeling the life of a woman lost to the shadows of history.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Macedonian writer Smilevski brings to life one of history's forgotten characters, Sigmund Freud's sister Adolfina, in this gem of a book. Based on a true story, the novel takes place during the brief moments leading up to Adolfina's death in a Nazi concentration camp, during which time she reflects on the decisions and accidents that brought her to this place. Emotionally abused by her mother, heartbroken at the loss of her beloved, and persistently lonely, Adolfina is a sensitive and empathetic narrator who portrays "Siggie" as a loving brother, albeit one who dismissed the opportunity to bring his sisters safely to London with him at the time of the Nazi occupation of Austria, an act which would ultimately lead the women to the gas chambers of Terez n. Smilevski beautifully juxtaposes Freud's scientific studies of mental illness with Adolfina's own beliefs regarding the beauty of madness (speaking of the mental institution in which she was confined for a time, Adolfina muses that "The human fates at the Nest wove wondrous, often invisible nets"), establishing a provocative discourse on sanity and perception. Adolfina's affection for her brother, her wish to be desired, and her yearning to give love as a mother make it clear why Freud once called her "the sweetest and best of sisters." Though occasionally plodding, Adolfina's story is deeply moving, and Smilevski's approach to her final moments is unforgettable.
