A man, whose name we never learn, pulls himself from a pile of dead bodies. The pile is in some sort of extermination camp and, having freed himself from what would have been his place in a mass grave, he proceeds to a nearly building. Upon entering the building he dons a uniform with insignias and then shoots a man before leaving the camp in a car and driving to a nearby town which could be closely compared by its description to a Jewish Ghetto from World War II. On arriving in the town, he appears to be expected and is take to be the commander they have been waiting for. He takes over his role and meets a woman who appears to know him in an intimate way, but he doesn’t know how. His life appears to descend into a violent bloodbath and the authority his position gives him is only withdrawn when the man he shot turns up in the town.

The reason I chose this book was because I thought it was going to be about the holocaust. The title and the colour of the cover cleverly suggest this but, whilst in some ways it is about the holocaust, it actually isn’t. That may sound a little confusing but this is a book that based a story around the recognisable facts of the holocaust i.e. mass extermination, death camps and ghettos, to name a few, but when you start to dig deeper and see references to Allah and Islam the actual story begins to dawn on you. It is not about the holocaust , it is not about any conflict that has happened but it is about ethnic cleansing, religious persecution and genocide. The complete lack of contextualisation i.e. we don’t know where it is set or when makes it all the more confusing and perhaps this was done deliberately to prevent the reader from associating the book with a particular conflict.

This certainly isn’t a book for the faint-hearted. The writing is visceral, violent and brutal. To add to this there are some equally visceral illustrations by Claire Weissman Wilks at the beginning of each chapter and on the inside covers of the book. Some may argue that the violence is gratuitous but I didn’t feel that it was. There was nothing portrayed in the book that hasn’t been described in the history of conflict.

The style of writing was interesting. In some ways it was surprising it was written in the third person as I wonder if it would have been more hard hitting if it had been written in the first person. Having said that, the author did manage to write in a way that made me feel like I was in the protagonists dream, perhaps nightmare, and I was just floating along observing the horrors before me.  This dream like state also allowed the author to miss out key elements of the story which were only partially revealed as the story progressed. It did feel at times like the protagonist was just sleep walking his way through the story and the lack of names for any of the characters also heightened the dream like experience. The lack of names was also, I am sure, another reference to the holocaust where Jews were dehumanised through being given identification numbers rather than using names.

The author tackles the difficult subject of power and what happens to people’s sense of morality when they are put into positions of power, particularly in conflict situations. The protagonist appears to be of confused morals having been the victim of some sort of persecution but then appears to participate in it himself once he takes on his commander role. I did question the sanity of the protagonist as his behaviour became more violent and, when his “brother”, the man he shot at the camp, later turns up in the town, I did question whether he actually existed or was  a personification of the battle the protagonist was having between his good and evil sides.

This book leaves you with many questions as to what it is really about. Having read quite a few other reviews, it appears this is a fairly normal reaction! To a certain extent, because of the lack of context, I think it is very much up to what the reader decides although the subtle messages relating to Islam throughout the book do seem to indicate this is a book about the conflict between Jews and Muslims.

Jew is not a book many readers would honestly be able to say they enjoyed due to the gloomy subject matter. I would however recommend reading it as it certainly makes you think and it is a book worthy of some debate. The illustrations in themselves make the book worth picking up.

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