Poetic, witty, and faintly surreal, Sefer delicately explores the legacy of the Holocaust for the postwar generation. The novel's protagonist, Jan Sefer, is a psychotherapist living in Vienna who finally addresses his own family background during a long postponed visit to Krak?w, his father's birthplace. Much like memory itself, Sefir speaks to us obliquely, through the juxtapositioin of images and vignettes. In their translation of Ewa Lipska's first novel, Barbara Bogoczek and Tony Howard deftly capture the poet's unmistakable voice - cool and precise, gently ironic, and...