September 1, 1939: Łódź, Poland is on the brink of invasion.
When the sirens begin, the professor is sitting at the Astoria Café.
The Astoria really did exist, but Professor Viktor Bauman is only a figment of a boy’s imagination.
In this work of historical metafiction, a present-day narrator recounts the story of Viktor Bauman, a disillusioned academic forced into the Łódź Ghetto, Elsa Dietrich, a captive Gestapo secretary, and Lieutenant Carl Becker, a troubled policeman whose fixation with Elsa is pushing him towards unspeakable cruelty.
The Requisitions is a novel about history, memory, and an author writing himself back into the lives of those who once lived.
“Vibrant, shadowed, compelling and ultimately symphonic, The Requisitions offers the gift of love in an impossible situation. What starts in a Polish town in a cafe in 1939 ends in the hearts of readers, everywhere, now. Moving and, as intended, memorable.”
Nor Hall, author of Those Women and The Moon and the Virgin
“… masterful prose and plotting, and a unique and imaginative approach to the subject, blending personal memoir, historical metafiction & philosophical inquiry into the deepest recesses of the human soul...sobering, unsettling...but comes out—just barely—on the side of a case for hope."
Janet Hulstrand, author of Demystifying the French
“Original, deftly crafted, memorable, and with a distinctive storytelling style … an impressive level of literary excellence from start to finish. The result is one of those novels that will linger in the mind of the reader longer after the book has been finished and set back upon the shelf.”
James A. Cox, Editor-in-Chief, The Midwest Review
“For a small press publisher, this is excellent fiction, well-written and executed. Philosophical questions such as the nature of guilt, blame and responsibility are discussed with intelligence and awareness .. a profound and disturbing work of fiction.”
Douglas Kemp, Historical Novel Society
“Deeply researched and masterfully constructed … there is an inherent lyricism throughout this original and ambitious novel that seamlessly combines historical metafiction, memoir and cultural history along with philosophical inquiry. ”
Heather Hartley, poet, author of Knock Knock and Adult Swim
“The Requisitions achieves that rare success of bringing meta-fiction into focus …
it is no exaggeration to say I could not put it down. Bravo.”
Eleanor Anstruther, author of A Perfect Explanation
“There is nothing escapist about this book, but it’s vivid in a way that is almost tangible, and human nature is its primary subject […] In spite of its grim subject matter, The Requisitions is a strangely and luminously hopeful novel. It reminds us that we possess the will not merely to survive, but to experience anew the joy and pleasure and laughter and love that make life worthwhile, even after the worst atrocities imaginable.”
Raina Lipsitz, The Metropolitan Review
“A masterful work of historical metafiction … the brutality of war lingers as an aftertaste in my mind alongside the undeniable warmth of friendship and loyalty. This is not a book for the faint of heart … How do we tell the story of those who cannot speak it for themselves?”
—Matthew Long, Beyond the Bookshelf (Substack), which selected The Requisitions as its 2024 Book of the Year