A series of sketches of life as a woman prisoner in Auschwitz. I had assumed Charlotte Delbo was Jewish, but it turns out she was a gentile member of the French resistance. This book reminds me of Sara Nomberg-Pryzytyk's Auschwitz: True Tales From a Grotesque Land, except more loosely structured. Some of the scenes are in verse form; some are less than half a page long. It's a very short book -- I finished in under an hour -- and worth looking at as a curiosity, if nothing else.

For a much more in-depth, nonfiction account of the experiences of Charlotte Delbo and her fellow sufferers, try the best-selling A Train in Winter: An Extraordinary Story of Women, Friendship, and Resistance in Occupied France. ( )