Camp Notebook

Book excerpt: Camp Notebook is a masterpiece in its own right, a crucial work of European verse. It is one of the greatest pieces of literature to emerge from the Holocaust, and probably the finest volume of poetry born from the horror of the Second World War. "... in a tiny concealed notebook, [the poet] wrote his "last and finest poems. In 1944, Radnóti was shot while being force-marched towards Germany and his body, exhumed from a ditch after the war, was identified from the notebook in his pocket. This notebook, reproduced here in facsimile ... adds tremendous poignancy to Francis R. Jones's new translation." - Translation Review, Vol. 7, No. 1, 2001 "The clarity, directness and formal skill of Francis Jones's translations ensure that Camp Notebook joins and extends the best of the Radnóti canon in English and is part of the process of sounding the full depth of the original poems." - George Szirtes