Garden, Ashes (1965)

A semi-autobiograpihcal novel in form of memories of a boy growing up before and during the WWII, told as a story about his father, a poor Jewish man trying to escape from the reality by writing the universal Bus, Ship, Rail and Air Travel Guide - a guidebook with which he soon becomes obsessed. The guide mutates into something far more complex, a huge volume in which the father seeks the justification of his tragic life.

"The text stubbornly, obstinately retained its original title as a travel guide, reflecting the sick confusion in my father's mind.: he actually believed that some publishers would be fooled by this obvious fraud and publish his chaotic compendium under the guise of an innocent timetable-travelogue. "

"My mother flips the light switch. The checkered oilcloth glistens on the table, and I reach to touch it: still a little slippery from grease, and the cuts here and there darkened by now, looking like healed scars. The moisture on the ceiling has given form to a giant who has become our good spirit, the guardian of our house: full-bearded like the prophets of the Hebrews, he holds in his right hand the tablets, in his left our lamp with porcelain shade that resembles an upside-down spittoon — a comparison taken literally by flies."