David's older brother Benny, who stayed home and dedicated himself to building a successful business, is all that remains of the family. Although it is David's first night back in the family home, the two brothers rapidly conflict over their opposing world views. When the spirit of their dead father, Hellman, is raised, Benny and David engage in an exhausting battle over the truth of his life in a concentration camp. Can anything or any situation justify killing? Shall we kill for revenge, in self-defense, for a political ideal, for love?

Robert Majzels, author of Apikoros Sleuth and City of Forgetting (Mercury), is a Montreal-born prose writer, playwright, translator and teacher; his first novel, Hellman’s Scrapbook (Cormorant), was hailed and acclaimed. His play This Night the Kapo won first prize in the Dorothy Silver Competition and the Canadian Jewish Playwriting Competition. In 1991, his fiction was featured in Coming Attractions (Oberon); his translations include Anne Dandurand’s Small Souls Under Siege (Cormorant) and The Waiting Room (The Mercury Press), and France Daigle’s 1953 (House of Anansi). He has also translated several novels by France Daigle, short stories by Anne Dandurand and, with Erin Mouré, two books of poetry by Nicole Brossard. Robert Majzels lives in Quebec.

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