About the Book
IN SEPTEMBER 2016, JERRY STAHL was feeling nervous on the eve of a two-week trip across Poland and Germany. But it was not just the stops at Auschwitz, Buchenwald, and Dachau that gave him anxiety. It was the fact that he would be traveling with two dozen strangers, by bus. In a tour group. And he was not a tour-group kind of guy. The decision to visit Holocaust-world did not come easy. Stahl's lifelong depression at an all-time high, his career and personal life at an all-time low, he had the idea to go on a trip where the despair he was feeling - out-of-control sadness, regret, and fear, not just for himself, but for the entire United States - would be appropriate. And where was despair more appropriate than the land of the Six Million? Seamlessly weaving global and personal history, through the lens of Stahl's own bent perspective, Nein, Nein, Nein! stands out as a triumph of strange-o reporting, a tale that takes us from gang polkas to tourrash to the truly disturbing snack bar at Auschwitz. Strap in for a raw, surreal, and redemptively hilarious trip. Get on the bus.
About the Author :
JERRY STAHL is the author of ten books, including the bestsellers Permanent Midnight, a memoir, and the novel I, Fatty. His journalism has appeared in Esquire, the New York Times, Vice, the Believer, and a variety of other publications. He has written extensively for film and television, including Hemingway & Gellhorn, which earned a Writers Guild Award nomination, CSI, and Escape at Dannemora, for which he received an Emmy nomination.
Review :
[Stahl's] razor-sharp gallows humor will have you howling one moment, breathless the next in the presence of wrenching generational pain, of humanity at its very worst, and goodness at its camouflaged best.-- "Brooklyn Rail"
Crackling . . . Bizarre, distressing, hilarious and hopeful. Read it immediately.-- "CultureWag"
Daring, caustic, often laugh-out-loud manic in its staring down of Holocaust tourism.-- "Moment Magazine"
Stahl is Jewish, and his dark gallows humor is one that many Jews will recognize as they read this book. He blends personal history with general history, and captures snippets of bigotry and antisemitism in 2016 with the rearview mirror that we have now of what was to come. It's an unexpectedly insightful book--not an easy read, but worth it.-- "Book Riot"
Stahl's talent, one that's central to a rich Jewish legacy, is turning the tragic and cruel, the unjust and infuriating into something funny. With nimble pacing, he wryly reveals humanity's baser instincts--the hypocrisy, the often commercialized, performative morality--exposing what lies (in all senses of the word) beneath.-- "Coachella Review"
There aren't many authors today who are willing to revisit the Holocaust and write about it. But then again, most authors aren't Jerry Stahl, who has the chutzpah to pull it off masterfully . . . The author's witty prose is appreciated because without levity a trip around the concentration camp horn would make any man or woman beg for mercy. His ability to provide his readers with a seat on the bus to experience the tour is exceptional. There was only one man for this job, and that man is Jerry Stahl.-- "Vol. 1 Brooklyn"
An audacious, emotional journey.-- "Village Voice"
Gonzo meets the Shoah in this wildly irreverent--and brilliant--tour of Holocaust tourism . . . Stahl knows his Holocaust history . . . but he was also prepared to be surprised . . . A vivid, potent, decidedly idiosyncratic addition to the literature of genocide.-- "Kirkus Reviews, starred review, a Best Nonfiction Book of 2022"
Mordantly funny . . . Fusing provocative insights with razor-edged wit, this offers a captivating take on a haunting chapter of history.-- "Publishers Weekly, starred review"
Stahl embarks on Holocaust tourism in this meditative yet humorous account, weaving personal narrative with reflections on current and past global events.-- "New York Times Book Review"
All his books showcase Stahl's lacerating humor and his talent for staring straight down the tunnel of humanity's darkest impulses . . . Stahl's new memoir is no exception: Call Nein, Nein, Nein! a travelogue through hell, both an account of concentration camp tourism and a personal mediation on its meaning.-- "Orange County Register"
Irrev-er-ent and absurd, Nein, Nein, Nein! demonstrates how an obtuse angle can help us approach incom-pre-hen-si-ble suffering . . . Stahl has penned a life-affirm-ing book that reminds us to find absur-di-ty in atroc-i-ty--because some-times, that's all there is.-- "Jewish Book Council"
The hallucinatory self-depreciation of Jerry Stahl's memoir allows for a nuanced look at the audacity of the ugly American . . . Stahl is celebrated for his masochistic honesty that is never less than brutal and almost always on the other side of hope, but in Nein, Nein, Nein!, we get something dangerously close to an Anne Frank-level of optimism.-- "Texas Observer"
While Nein, Nein, Nein! is darkly confessional, it is also an exploration of how we remember the Holocaust and whether it is even possible to properly mourn and honor the victims of unspeakable tragedy . . . The result is a sort of gonzo travel book about the ways the Holocaust is memorialized, commercialized and trivialized in the countries where it took place.-- "Jewish Telegraphic Agency"
There's a laugh on almost every page of Nein, Nein, Nein!, but for all his wit and somewhat skewed perspective, Stahl never loses sight of the gravity of the places he visits . . . Stahl's book shows the thought processes of a man feeling at his lowest soothing his 'shpilkes' by experiencing one of the most sobering, draining tours one can possibly imagine. For him, it's cathartic, and readers might find it to be the same for them.-- "Jewish Journal"
