The Man Who Never Stopped Sleeping

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Erwin sleeps and sleeps, barely able to awaken. It is 1946, and the Jewish boy who narrowly survived drifts aimlessly through Europe, on trains and horse-drawn carts, perpetually drowsy. Sleep keeps alive for Erwin what has been lost: the green, familiar Bukovina, his beloved mother, and his father, who wrote novels on the side. After a stay in a refugee camp near Naples and an adventurous sea passage, Erwin finds himself in Palestine. The kibbutz is meant to transform the seventeen-year-old into the hopeful "new Jew," but the foreignness only deepens his pain. Erwin is severely injured, and once again, sleep prevails—at least for a time. As he recovers, he reads the Bible and struggles to learn Hebrew. The sacred language of his ancestors finally shows him a way to preserve what is kept in sleep, dreams, and memory: under a new name, Aharon begins to write, allowing the vanished world to re-emerge in the new, ancient language. With tender strength, Aharon Appelfeld's autobiographical novel depicts an awakening to new life amid the turmoil of flight and emigration.