The Street Sweeper
Elliot Perlman
Vintage
On a busy New York City corner, four people, a street sweeper, an oncologist, a history professor and a little girl are clustered in a small group. From those who pass them on that busy corner, few if any have any idea as to what has led the group here. Yet these seemingly unrelated individuals from different walks of life are bound by a common history of struggle, bravery, and unexpected kindness of those who have come before them.
Recently released from prison, Lamont Williams is an African American janitor working on probation in an Manhattan hospital and seeking to locate the daughter he has not seen for the past few years. By chance on one of his shifts, Lamont befriends an elderly patient, Henryk Mendelbrot, a Holocaust survivor of Auschwitz-Birkenau prison camp.
Whilst Henryk recalls the horrors of those dark days in Poland from his hospital bed, a few kilometers uptown, the historian Adam Zignelik, a history professor at Columbia University and the son of a civil rights lawyer, is on the cusp of a professional and personal crisis. Desperate for something to save him, he uncovers the remarkable story of a man who was determined to record the voices and stories of Holocaust survivors.
As the two men struggle to survive in the early 21st-century New York, their different paths converge in ways neither could have foreseen. Their stories span the 20th century, sweeping across continents and touching on pivotal historical moments, to finally bring us to the present. In the hands of a less skillful author, The Street Sweeper could have ended up a sentimental Holocaust or a preaching civil rights story. But Perlman's fresh approach and skill breathed new life into these well-visited chapters of our history. 4 stars
No comments:
Post a Comment