Cold Crematorium

A literary diamond – sharp-edged and crystal clear. A haunting chronicle of rare, unsettling power… A holocaust memoir worthy of Primo Levi * The Times *
Meticulous and intelligent translation… A masterpiece * New Statesman *
In the timeliest possible way, it succeeds in restoring the Holocaust’s reality… Debreczeni writes with a cinematic clarity, a determination to make detail triumph over mass dehumanisation * Telegraph *
Astonishing… Debreczeni captures detail after harrowing detail * Guardian *
As immediate a confrontation of the horrors of the camps as I’ve ever encountered. It’s also a subtle if startling meditation on what it is to attempt to confront those horrors with words… Debreczeni has preserved a panoptic depiction of hell, at once personal, communal and atmospheric * New York Times *
A timely reminder of man’s inhumanity to man, especially for the young generation – Jung Chang, author of WILD SWANS
Whatever I say about this amazing book feels inadequate. Cold Crematorium is a brilliant book, but the word brilliant does not encompass it. It evades words. I have seldom read a book that creates empathy while dealing with the most dehumanized and dehumanizing experience. I wish everyone would read it, especially in this time of sheer inhumanity and baffling complicity – Azar Nafisi, author of READING LOLITA IN TEHRAN
An immensely powerful and deeply humane eyewitness account of the horror of the camps. Through vivid descriptions of what he saw and experienced there, Debreczeni confronts the reader with the hell that the Holocaust was; not as something general belonging to history, but as a particular, concrete and devastating reality – Karl Ove Knausgaard, author of MY STRUGGLE
Cold Crematorium offers a cleareyed view of the Nazi death machine with shades of gallows humor, tragedy and anthropological insight * New York Times *
An indispensable work of literature and a historical document of unsurpassed importance. It should be required reading – Jonathan Safran Foer, author of EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED

J zsef Debreczeni (Author)

J zsef Debreczeni was a Hungarian-language novelist, poet, and journalist who spent most of his life in the former Yugoslavia. He was an editor of the Hungarian daily newspaper nnep in Budapest, from which he was dismissed due to anti-Jewish legislation. He was later a contributor to the Hungarian media, including the newspaper Napl , in the Yugoslav region of Vojvodina, as well as leading Belgrade newspapers. He was awarded the Hid Prize, the highest distinction in Hungarian literature in the former Yugoslavia.

Paul Olchvary (Translator)

Paul Olchvary has translated many books for leading publishers, including Gy rgy Dragoman’s The White King, Andras Forgach’s No Live Files Remain, dam Bodor’s The Sinistra Zone, Vilmos Kondor’s Budapest Noir, and Karoly Pap’s Azarel. He has received translation awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, PEN America, and Hungary’s Milan F st Foundation. His shorter translations have appeared in the Paris Review, New York Times Magazine, Kenyon Review, Tablet, AGNI, and Guernica. He lives in Williamstown, Massachusetts.

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