This Darkness Will Never End

This Darkness Will Never End, the first short story collection by the Hungarian-born author Edith Bruck, was published to acclaim in Italy in 1962. After World War II, Bruck, a Holocaust survivor, settled in Rome where she wrote her fable-like stories, recounting the lives of poor Jewish families in Europe before, during, and immediately following the war.

In the title story, believed by some film scholars to have inspired the Oscar-winning movie Life Is Beautiful, a young girl shepherds her blind, sickly brother as they are deported. In “Reading French Poetry after the War,” an orphan struggling to find her place in the world takes solace in French verse. In the most colorful story, a poor child must consult the fearsome shochet—a butcher who follows Jewish law to slaughter livestock and certify that it’s kosher—and return home with bad news about the family dinner.

Beautifully translated from the Italian by Jeanne Bonner, these stories offer a glimpse into a bygone world. They testify to the resilience of survivors like Bruck, whom Italian critics initially compared to Anne Frank, deeming her the writer Anne would have become had she survived.