A novel based on a true story . . .
On April 16, 1942, a few days before Hitler’s birthday, a handful of Swiss Nazis in Payerne lure Arthur Bloch, a Jewish cattle merchant, into a stable and kill him with an iron bar. Europe is in flames, but this is Switzerland, and Payerne, a rural market town of butchers and bankers, is more concerned with unemployment and local bankruptcies than the fate of nations across the border. Fernand Ischi, leader of the local Nazi cell, blames everything on the Jews and Bloch’s murder is to be an example, a foretaste of what is to come once the Nazis take over Switzerland.
Jacques Chessex, winner of the prestigious Prix Goncourt, was a child in Payerne. He knew the murderers and sat next to Ischi’s children in school. He has written a terse, implacable story that has awakened memories in a country that seems to endlessly rediscover dark areas of its past.
Author Information
Jacques Chessex is one of Switzerland's great contemporary authors. He is revered in France and won the Prix Goncourt in 1973 for L'Ogre...
The Translator
W.Donald Wilson, born in 1938, is a professor at the University of Waterloo in Canada. He is a translator of fiction and non-fiction from the French and his work includes titles by Yves Thériault and Jean Heffer.
Praise for A Jew Must Die
'Vivid and beautifully crafted 'A Jew Must Die' is at times shocking in its depiction of the ordinariness of evil. A horrifying masterpiece...' Crime Time
'This brief, disturbing masterpiece goes to the heart of the creative process...' Independent
