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Sto caricando le informazioni... I Am Fifteen--and I Don't Want To Die (1956)di Christine Arnothy
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Iscriviti per consentire a LibraryThing di scoprire se ti piacerà questo libro. Attualmente non vi sono conversazioni su questo libro. This is a harrowing and realistic account of a city at war through the eyes of a child, back before such accounts became popular (Zlata Filipovic's diary, anyone?) However, I don't understand why the second half was included. It too was interesting, but it had so little to do with the first part that they might as well have been separate books. nessuna recensione | aggiungi una recensione
The compelling and moving narrative of a young girl caught by the tides of marching armies during the siege of Budapest in 1945. Told with calm compulsive force, and with an intimacy and maturity that defies the author's youth, I am fifteen is a poignant coming-of-age memoir, and a remarkable tale of ordinary lives destroyed by war. Budapest in early 1945: the siege - which was to kill some 40,000 civilians - raged around Christine Arnothy, her family and the various inhabitants of their building. Hiding in cellars, venturing out in a desperate search for food and water only when the noise of battle momentarily receded, they wondered if the Germans from the West or the Russians from the East would be victorious and under which they would fare best. Praying she would survive, and mourning the loss of some of her fellow refugees, Christine found solace in her writing - in pencil on a small notepad in the cellar - and dreamt of becoming a writer at the end of the war. Her subsequent adventures include a dramatic escape over the frontier into Austria, to Vienna and freedom (or so she imagined); then the difficult decision to leave her parents in an Allied refugee camp, while she searched for a new life in Paris. Non sono state trovate descrizioni di biblioteche |
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Google Books — Sto caricando le informazioni... GeneriSistema Decimale Melvil (DDC)848.912Literature French Miscellaneous French writings 1900- 1900-1999 1900-1945Classificazione LCVotoMedia:
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** Read this and be moved by the plight of a young innocent girl trapped in the midst of the horrors of war. **
How could anyone read this memoir and rate it at anything less than 5 stars? It is an achingly honest, heartfelt, no-holds-barred story of the author's own experiences in occupied Budapest during and after the Second World War, including the family's bid to escape first the city of Budapest, and later the country, to seek sanctuary in Austria. The atrocities that faced 15-year-old Christine in 1944 must have been horrendous to recall to memory and put down on paper. Christine's story, like Anne Frank's diary, is a Second World War account that should be read by all. Together with her parents and neighbours, in the cellars of their well-appointed apartment block, Christine is faced with relentless hunger, boredom, fear, death, sickness and terrible thirst. To venture upstairs into the apartments is to take one's life into one's own hands; to venture out onto the street, for water or for other commodities, is an indescribable risk. Over 40,000 civilians died in the battle that raged between the Germans and Russians in Budapest, from the end of 1944, and throughout much of 1945.
Christine's story doesn't end with the Second World War, but continues with the communist occupation, and the family's bid to escape to their humble cottage in the country, lying low to escape notice. Circumstances again become intolerable and the family make a bid for what they think will be their freedom in Austria, but which turns out to be a bleak refugee camp. Christine's story continues with yet another move to escape control and form a new life in another country, but this too will unsurprisingly be beset with difficulties as Christine faces prejudice and competition for work. Through it all this young girl is kept going by her ambition to write, her love and passion for writing, and her firm belief that she will one day succeed in this goal of hers to write successfully and to be read by many people.
Superbly written; each scene is brilliantly and vividly described, like a really good novel, without being in the least bit self-pitying. You can only emerge from the pages of this memoir full of admiration for the courage and self-determination for the young Christine and the many others of her generation who had the same horrors and the same tough future to face. An outstanding wartime survival story. ( )