Author Jim Shepard. BARRY GOLDSTEIN
Before we can even get into the story of The Book of Aron, the bleaker-than-Bleak-House narrative of boys smuggling turnips and information through the heavily guarded walls of the Jewish ghetto, the decline of an orphanage therein, and the looming specter of Treblinka—before we can dig into the language, it seems important to ask this question: Why did a non-Jew living in the 21st century write a book about the Holocaust?
The question doesn’t make Jim Shepard blush. Shepard is a professor of creative writing at Williams College and the author of 11 books, one of which was a National Book Award finalist. He’s clearly got the chops…
