Forgetting

"Finkelstein’s fascinating English-language debut chronicles a 20-something woman grappling with intergenerational trauma in 2010s France…Grounded by its protagonist’s distinctive, powerful voice, the novel brims with thought-provoking reflections on such weighty subjects as the passage of time and the politics of history and memory ('We made the victims into a cluster of numbers, and then we turned the executioners into a tangle of myths,' Alma notes about the Holocaust). Slim but impactful, this is a must-read." —Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

"A walk through Paris in the early hours of the morning reveals the rich, complex interiority of Finkelstein’s protagonist…Alma is tormented by the Holocaust; she’s obsessed with technology, Coke and Pepsi, and Daft Punk’s 'One More Time.' She’s somewhere between 'twenty and twenty-five years old,' an insomniac, and alone in Paris. As night bleeds into morning, she wanders the empty streets, ruminating upon the life of her grandfather—a Polish Holocaust survivor—as well as her own childhood … A brilliant, peculiar confrontation with genealogy and inheritance." —Kirkus Reviews