This Darkness Will Never End

187-page paperback / 5.5" x 8.5" / ISBN 9781589882010
Publication Date: 4/22/2025 (available for preorder)

The stunning short story collection—available in English for the first time—that established Edith Bruck as a major figure in Italian literature.

This Darkness Will Never End, the first short story collection by the Hungarian author Edith Bruck, was published to acclaim in Italy in 1962. After World War II, Bruck, a Holocaust survivor, settled in Rome where she wrote her fable-like stories, recounting the lives of poor Jewish families in Europe before, during, and immediately following the war. 

In the title story, believed by some film scholars to have inspired the Oscar-winning movie Life Is Beautiful, a young girl shepherds her blind, sickly brother as they are deported. In “Reading French Poetry after the War,” an orphan struggling to find her place in the world takes solace in French verse. In the most colorful story, a poor child must consult the fearsome shochet—a butcher who follows Jewish law to slaughter livestock and certify that it’s kosher—and return home with bad news about the family dinner. 

Beautifully translated from the Italian by Jeanne Bonner, these stories offer a glimpse into a bygone world. They testify to the resilience of survivors like Bruck, whom Italian critics initially compared to Anne Frank, deeming her the writer Anne would have become had she survived.

PRAISE FOR EDITH BRUCK AND HER BOOKS:

"This Darkness Will Never End subtly draws us into the complex emotional world of growing up in wartime. These are finely wrought, meticulously translated stories about living through both everyday and extraordinary hardship—Bruck, unsparing and insightful, is a major Jewish voice."
—Jamie Richards, winner of the National Translation Award in Prose, and translator of Adua by Igiaba Scego

Bruck's “spare prose captures the raw terror and bitter sorrow of the camps. She also finds lyrical beauty and unexpected joy in moments of calm. Reading her work is like breaking bread with her, seeking light amid the shadows cast by history.”
—Wall Street Journal on Lost Bread

“Riveting.”
—Jewish Book Council on Lost Bread

“Unforgettable testimony.”
—Primo Levi on Who Loves You Like This?

“Bruck’s frequent focus on the period following the liberation of the camps is part of what makes her work original and compelling.”
—Boston Globe

“One of the last great witnesses of the Shoah.”
—Le Monde (France)

“All Edith Bruck’s life’s work is a testimony, and ultimately the extreme, desperate, word-filled effort to make the incomprehensible comprehensible.”
—Corriere della Sera Sette (Italy) 

Edith Bruck has written more than twenty books of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, many of which reflect her life-long commitment to Holocaust testimony, including Who Loves You Like This (1959, Italian edition; 2001, English edition, Paul Dry Books). She has twice been nominated for the Italian equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize, and her books have been translated into many languages including English, French, German, Dutch, Polish, Hungarian, and Hebrew. She lives in Rome.

Jeanne Bonner is a writer, editor and literary translator. Her essays and reporting have been published by the New York Times, Boston Globe, American Scholar, Longreads, Marketplace, NPR, and CNN. Bonner was a 2022 NEA literature fellow in translation. She lives in Connecticut.