"Patrick Hicks is the author of several poetry collections, most recently Finding the Gossamer and This London. His work has appeared in some of the most vital literary journals in America, including Ploughshares, Glimmer Train, The Missouri Review, and many others. He has been nominated seven times for the Pushcart Prize, been a finalist for the High Plains Book Award, the Dzanc Books Short Story Collection Competition, and the Gival Press Novel Award. He has won the Glimmer Train Fiction Award as well as a number of grants, including ones from the Bush Artist Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. After living in Europe for many years, he now lives in the Midwest where he is the Writer-in-Residence at Augustana College and also a faculty member in the low-residency MFA Program at Sierra Nevada College. The author lives in Sioux Falls, SD."
"A heart-rending novel about a Nazi death camp that didn't
exist—but could have. Hicks. . . tells the story of the
fictional Lubizec as if it were a historical account, complete with
footnotes and quotes from future fictional documentaries, to
devastating effect. . . . Hicks' prose is clear and unflinching,
and while, as a result, there are many difficult-to-read scenes,
this is as it should be. . . .Thought-provoking and gut-wrenchingly
powerful." — Kirkus Reviews
"The fictional presentation here measures up to any factual account
of the Holocaust this reviewer has ever read. Highly recommended,
especially for general readers who wish to know more about this
unspeakable chapter of human history. Even specialists will be
taken in by its human-interest dimension." — Library
Journal
"Hicks injects his prose with the first person plural, which
inexorably absorbs us into the story to act as another pair of
shoulders bearing the knee-buckling weight of remembering the
dead." — War, Literature, and the Arts: An International Journal of
the Humanities
"[E]nigmatic, powerful, moving. . . memorable and well worth
reading." — The American Israelite
"This is a bruising novel, a compelling book that will stun readers
while leaving a lingering emotional ache. Even those familiar with
the vast body of Holocaust literature will find much here that is
new, revealing, moving—and deeply disturbing. . . It is Hicks' use
of language that powers this book. . . In a few deft strokes of
character development and carefully chosen language Hicks makes us
feel empathy for both the doomed and the few survivors." — Jaime
Sullivan, Paddlefish
"This is a vividly detailed, terrifying, convincing, and completely
spellbinding story rooted in those murderous events we
now call the Holocaust. It is also the story of a
loving, good-humored family man who each morning goes off to
oversee mass homicide -- a dramatic example of what Hannah Arendt
once referred to as 'the banality of evil.'
Patrick Hicks has accomplished
a very difficult literary task. He has a given a
believable and fresh and original face to
barbarism. What a fine book this is." — Tim O'Brien,
author of The Things They Carried
"Out of the cooling ashes of Holocaust history, Patrick Hicks
manages to break our hearts with a story we thought we already
knew. The Commandant of Lubizec is profound, provocative, and
profane in all the best ways. While reading The Commandant of
Lubizec, one question kept running through my mind: 'Was it really
this bad?' Through his all-too-real fiction, Patrick Hicks
convinces me that, sadly, the answer is 'Yes.' The Commandant
of Lubizec is important and unforgettable." — David
Abrams, author of Fobbit, a novel about the Iraq War
"In a powerful blend of research and imagination, Patrick Hicks
ushers us through the history of a prototypical death camp
during the Holocaust. This novel mourns the millions who were
silenced, while reminding us how ordinary and matter-of-fact the
face of evil can be. The Commandant of Lubizec is a painfully
necessary book." — Clint McCown, author of War Memorials and
Haints; winner of the American Fiction Prize
"In The Commandant of Lubizec, Patrick Hicks imagines the
unimaginable and thus gives us a glimpse into the terrible
complexity of the human heart. This is a fascinating and important
book." — Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize winner, author of
Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, They Whisper, and A Small
Hotel
"The Commandant of Lubizec melds the historian’s factual precision
with a storyteller’s compassion and love for humanity. This is
fiction at its highest register -- creating inroads into the past
so that we might hear those murdered in the extermination camps of
the Holocaust, so that we might better recognize the world we have
inherited. Profound and trenchant, The Commandant of Lubizec is a
brave and unflinching book. It is a stunning literary debut. I urge
you to read it before it’s made into a film." — Brian
Turner, author of Here, Bullet and Phantom Noise
"In The Commandant of Lubizec, Patrick Hicks may have invented
a brand new genre, the fictional documentary. This novel seems so
convincingly based in evidence that any reader unsure of the names
of the Nazi death camps is likely to read it as non-fiction—which
is part of Hicks’ deep intent. He reveals to us how quickly we lose
track of history and how troubling that loss is. In writing a novel
about those who survived a fictional death camp, he mysteriously
makes us feel and understand the millions of deaths in the real
ones. Through his playful art, he makes us feel and understand
the horror of the Holocaust in ways most non-fiction simply
cannot. It’s a remarkable and elegant artistic achievement.
This is a novel I deeply admire." — Kent Meyers, author
of The Work of Wolves and Twisted Tree
"[Hicks] is an extremely gifted crafter of words, one who is more
than capable of making us understand the importance of a single
life of a man staring at an incomprehensible, unjust death in the
face. . . If such events make us want to turn away, it is the power
of Hicks' novel to rally us to stand with those we can only
imagine, opening our eyes to a wider universe of those shared,
small moments we ignore at our own peril." — The Briar
Cliff Review
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