Dominique Valentin: The Schickse

Dominique Valentin
The Schickse

fiction

208pp

A thrilling novel about love between a non-Jewish woman and a Jewish man, whose family in the light of a certain event in German history, namely the Holocaust, cannot come to terms with his relationship with this woman.

In her autobiographical novel Dominique Valentin describes the life of a Jewish family in Germany and Israel, how the parents fell in love with each other whilst fleeing the Nazis in Russian Dschambul, married and had three sons. Images of the past haunt the mother, whose sole purpose in life is her family - the family, to whom god granted survival as a means to ensure future generations. The father becomes a successful businessman, the sons grow up and Moses, the second eldest, falls in love with a non-Jewish woman. They live together, but when they decide to marry, his family tries everything to prevent this event: the »Floozy«, the vulgar way non-Jewish woman are referred to, is not supposed to marry her son.

Dominique Valentin is the Schickse. From different family perspectives, she faces the relatives, especially the mother, with all her strength and weakness, consequences of difficult years, her disappointments and her love for her son. But despite all this the Schickse is a woman in love and who, just like the mother, is fighting for Moses.

In its painful clarity this is a moving book about love and the effects the Holocaust has on the social life of Jews and non-Jews still today.

Rights sold

paperback – Piper

Previously published (rights reverted)
Netherlands - Van Gennep
book club – Büchergilde Gutenberg

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Reviews

»This is a great success: exciting, sensorial, never self-pitying and full of love.«
Berliner Morgenpost

»A supremely good, humorous, effective, analytic and unrelenting tale - full of enthusiastic brilliance.«
Süddeutsche Zeitung