The Boxer is oddly structured as an interview of a camp survivor Aron (Arno) Blank recording his post-war life for a young interviewer over the course of two years. After losing his wife and two daughters, and surviving concentration camp, the post war life involves several women, men friends his age, several jobs, and the raising and nurturing a boy he barely remembers, his son, who was lost to him from age two and who he finds after the war now age ten. Jurek Becker's biography is that of Mark, the son, and this seems to be his way of interviewing his father, imagining his fathers life, inserting himself into the story only as the son Mark, and as the interviewer. This is a special book with no pretense, lots of divots, missing pieces, and for what is not there as well as what is, it is memorable. ( )