The Humanitas Fiction publishing house is waiting for you on Thursday, February 1, at 7 p.m. at the Humanitas Bookstore in Cișmigiu (Bd. Regina Elisabeta no. 38) for the release of the novel Beyond the barbed wire by James D. Shipman, recently published in the “Raftul Denisei” collection coordinated by Denisa Comănescu, translated by Emilia Ivancu.
In the fall of 1944, a group of prisoners at Auschwitz-Birkenau, aided by some inmates from the women's camp, plan to blow up the crematoriums and gas chambers – signaling the beginning of a revolt aimed at liberating the camp. Almost two hundred and fifty prisoners are killed during the fighting, and another two hundred will be shot after the revolt is defeated. Starting from real facts and extensive documentation, James D. Shipman manages to reproduce with the tools of fiction this extraordinary episode of the Second World War.
Participants: Dr. Felicia Waldman, university lecturer at the Faculty of Letters, University of Bucharest, coordinator of the Center for Jewish Studies, Marius Constantinescu and Cristian Pătrășconiu, cultural journalists. The moderator of the meeting will be Denisa Comănescu, director of the Humanitas Fiction Publishing House. Access is free of charge, on the basis of a reservation by eventbookwithin the limits of available places.
Every morning, Anna walks several kilometers through the cold to the Armament Factory, where she works with other inmates. Risking his life, he manages to extract, hidden in secret pockets of his clothes, small amounts of gunpowder and bring them to the camp, where the Resistance intended to blow up the gas chamber and Crematorium IV. But dangers are at every turn, and Anna is forced to endure the cruel games to which the SS guards subject her and to face the betrayal of the prisoner in whom she trusted the most.
“There is a rich literature of the Holocaust, each novel revealing the unspeakable horrors of the Nazi death camps and the suffering of millions of people, Jews and others whom the Nazis deemed inferior. What is often overlooked, however, are the stories of the prisoners who rose up against the Nazis, knowing that there was no hope and that only death awaited them. James D. Shipman harmoniously weaves historical detail with fiction in this novel of the 1944 Auschwitz uprising.” – Historical Novels Review. “The story of the Sonderkommando prisoners is undoubtedly one of the darkest episodes of the Auschwitz camp. The fact that they risked their lives to gather evidence of the crimes, so that new generations would know what happened beyond the barbed wire of the gas chambers and crematoria, is a testament to their clairvoyance, to their good understanding of the situation they were in. and of their boundless courage.” Piotr MA Cywiński Director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum Speech on the occasion of commemorating the seventieth anniversary of the uprising
The release will be trackable #live & #online on the page of Facebook – Humanitas Fiction and on Youtube – Humanitas.
James D. Shipman was born in western North America and began his writing career publishing short prose and poetry during his years studying History at the University of Washington. In addition to his bachelor's degree in history, he attended and graduated from Gonzaga University in Law. In 2004 he opened his own law firm. His first novel, Constantinopleappears in 2013, followed by Going Home (2015), It Is Well (2016), A Bitter Rain (2017), Task Force Baum (2019), Irena's War (2020). In 2022 he publishes the novel Beyond the barbed wire (Beyond the Wire; Humanitas Fiction, 2024). His most recent novel, Before the Stormcoming out in 2023. To date, James D. Shipman has published eight novels, many of which have become Amazon bestsellers.
