Main Navigation

RockWay Press®LLC

If Maxwell Perkins were alive, he'd work here.™

The Kommandant's Mistress



Powerful and provocative, haunting and disturbing, lyrical yet profoundly unsettling, THE KOMMANDANT'S MISTRESS portrays the complex power struggle between the Kommandant of a Nazi Concentration Camp and the Jewish inmate he forces to become his "mistress". In this mesmerizing depiction of sexual subjugation, in which the conventional labels of "torturer" and "victim" obscure the unexpected realities of those positions, a young woman must survive the horrors of her daily servitude inside the Kommandant's office while struggling with the moral obligation to aid others in the Camp. Aware of virtually every secret of the Kommandant's professional and personal life, the woman bears witness to the grotesque reality of the camp even as she memorizes the intimate details of a man fighting his own tortured existence. After the war, their "relationship" in the Camp proves inescapable, as the past they share pursues them both, culminating in an encounter that is as shocking and disturbing as it is inevitable.

Winner of the University of Rochester's Kafka Award 1994 for "best book of prose fiction by an American woman" and chosen as one of THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW's "Top 100 Books of 1993", this revised & expanded edition contains new material, including the author's original "story" and "poem" which formed the inspiration for the book, as well as discussion questions for teachers, students, and book groups.

Revised & Expanded, 20th Anniversary Edition.


Awards

  • Winner of the University of Rochester's Janet Heidinger Kafka Award 1994 for "the outstanding book of prose fiction written by an American woman."
  • Selected as one of The New York Times Book Review's "Top 100 Books of 1993"
  • Winner of the Central State University (OH) Talmadge McKinney Research Award 1994

 Select Reviews

  • "A fictional work of tortured brilliance and power...devastating ...riveting ... remarkable." Patrick McGrath, New York Times Book Review
  • "Szeman has created a novel that announces her arrival as a major talent." GeoffreyStokes, Boston Sunday Globe
  • "Riveting ...A stunning achievement." Andy Solomon, San Francisco Chronicle
  • "A novel of considerable power. Szeman's sense of character, place, and history is unerring, and her mastery of her narrative strategy is remarkable." Emily Wright, Atlanta Journal Constitution
  • "Daring ... Intoxicating ... Addictive." The New Yorker
  • "Szeman never shrinks from the terrible truths of her dark theme...By choosing such a disturbing subject, and treating it in original and uncompromising ways, Szeman has added her voice to this essential literature of recent history." Hilma Wolitzer, New York Newsday
  • "Szeman's uncompromising realism and superb use of stream-of- consciousness technique make this a chilling study of evil, erotic obsession, and the will to survive." from Publishers Weekly (*review, denoting a work of exceptional worth & merit), © 1993 Reed Business Information



American Editions 
(First Edition published by HarperCollins 1993, HarperPerennial 1994; 
second edition by Arcade 2000; 
Revised & Expanded, 20th Anniversary Edition, Paper & eBook by RWP 2012)

cache/wst.opf.2349585.xml
UK & Foreign Editions
 (Translated & published in 10 foreign languages, including French, Spanish,
Russian, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Lithuanian, Japanese, among others)

cache/wst.opf.2349281.xml


Web-Site © 2004-2012 by RockWay Press, LLC and Alexandria Constantinova Szeman 
RockWay Press, LLC Logo © 2004, 2012 by Alexandria Constantinova Szeman.
Wet-plate Collodian Photograph of Cathedral Rock © 2004 by Robert J. Szabo. Used with artist's gracious permission.


Web-site Updated: Tuesday 1 May 2012

Web Hosting Companies