Max by Alex Miller

Book Description

Secondhand. Fine condition.

Max tells of Alex Miller's search, in turns fearful and elated, for the elusive past of Max Blatt, a man he loves, who loved him and who taught him that he must write with love.

Miller discovers that he is also searching for a defining part of himself, formed by his relation to Max Blatt, but whose significance will remain obscure until he finds Max, complete, in his history.

Alex Miller followed the faint trail of Max Blatt's early life for five years. Max's story unfolded, slowly at first, from the Melbourne Holocaust Centre's records and then to Berlin's Federal Archives. From Berlin, Miller travelled to Max's old hometown of Wroclaw in Poland. And finally, in Israel with Max's niece, Liat Shoham, and her brother Yossi Blatt, at Liat's home in the moshav Shadmot Dvora in the Lower Galilee, the circle of friendship was closed, and the mystery of Max's legendary silence was unmasked.

Max is an astonishing and moving tribute to friendship, a meditation on memory itself, and a reminder to the reader that history belongs to humanity. (publisher blurb)