»Her debut is as gripping and opulently narrated as a novel, but simultaneously as authentic as a documentary.«

»Shelly Kupferberg publishes a personal and impressive portrait about a Jewish life in Vienna.«

»Kupferberg transforms the pictures and documents she digs up in a Tel Aviv attic into an accurate chronicle of robbery and annihilation.«

»She writes in a personal tone without oversharing.«

»Shelly Kupferberg’s family history is a book that will continue to reverberate and that unfortunately will never lose its topicality.«

»His [Isidor’s] story is our story, with which you can gain clarity.«

»A book full of history.«

»Kupferberg’s debut tragically provides insight into the history and the lives of individual people, thereby also showing the fate of the many.«

»Shelly Kupferberg gently feels her way towards Isidor’s fate, she tells the story not only of him but also of the people around him.«

»This is a tribute to an individual fate, and also representative of the many Jewish lives extinguished under the Nazi dictatorship.«

»Shelly Kupferberg weaves together a tapestry of biographies, making the everyday life of the time much more tangible than any standard historical overview could.«

»Kupferberg succeeds in creating a sensitive panorama of the worst moments, borne by a discreet journalistic curiosity.«

»In Isidor, she tells two stories. One is adventurous; one abhorrent. One about a transformation; the other about a murder.«

»She meticulously traces the fate of her great-granduncle in a melancholically sad, sometimes wonderfully distanced tone.«



 

»Kupferberg's great merit is to make history comprehensible once again with Isidor. The unthinkable becomes shockingly tangible in the view of the individual fate.«