Perla is the story of a woman who lived through the horrors of the Holocaust and would ultimately die unable to extricate herself from its corrosive memory. It is told from the point of view of her son, who, not long after losing her, learns that he is about to become a father. These two events become the impetus for reconstructing Perla's past and for understanding gestation, as he's equally in the dark about what happened in his mother's life and what is taking place in his wife's womb. Strangely, at this time he finds himself drawn to the poets Novalis, Holderlin, and Schlegel,...