'The Rest Is Memory' is a novel inspired by photos taken at Auschwitz

NPR's Book of the Day

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Arts, Books

4.2 • 671 Ratings

🗓️ 14 January 2025

⏱️ 8 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

About 10 years ago, author Lily Tuck was reading obituaries in The New York Times when she came across photos of Czesława Kwoka, a young prisoner at Auschwitz concentration camp. Tuck didn't know much about Kwoka besides her name and age, but decided to try to write about her. The result is her new novel, The Rest Is Memory, which imagines Kwoka's life at Auschwitz. In today's episode, Tuck speaks with NPR's Scott Simon about how she approaches narrating a story through Kwoka's eyes, the careful attention she pays to language, and the Polish people who lost their lives in the Holocaust.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbong. You never know where inspiration might come from.
0:07.9	For National Book Award-winning novel, Lily Tuck's new novel, The Rest is Memory.
0:12.6	Inspiration came from reading the obituary section in the New York Times. The book is about a young
0:17.8	Polish girl killed at the Auschwitz concentration camp.
0:22.4	Her name was Sislawa Quoka.
0:29.2	She was a real person, but Tuck couldn't find much about her besides the basic biographical information.
0:32.3	But we know her name, and that's important.
0:39.7	Because as Tuck tells MPR Scott Simon in this interview, writing and remembering names is a way to honor people who would otherwise be lost to history. That's after the break. In the U.S., national security
0:46.2	news can feel far away from daily life. Distant wars, murky conflicts, diplomacy behind closed doors
0:52.9	on our new show, Sources and Methods.
0:55.5	NPR reporters on the ground bring you stories of real people,
0:59.2	helping you understand why distant events matter here at home.
1:03.1	Listen to sources and methods on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
1:08.8	Lily Tech saw a photo of a girl about a decade ago, 14 years old, face bruised, eyes stony,
1:16.6	and shown in striped concentration camp garb, wearing the number with which the Nazis replaced her name.
1:23.7	Her name is Sesslawa Quoka, and in a new novel Lillituck imagines her life and those of other polar citizens killed at the Auschwitz concentration camp.
1:35.2	Some Catholic, like Sesslawa, and many, many Jews.
1:40.1	Her novel, the rest is memory.
1:43.5	And Lillituck, the National Book Award, Woody Novelist, joins us now from NPR in New York.
1:48.2	Thanks so much for being with us.
1:50.0	Thank you.
1:50.8	How did you see this photo?
	...

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