Karl Koenig has been photographing Holocaust concentration camps for more than ten years. These photographs of the architecture and landscape of suffering, he believes, "may have some impact on people who are on the path to indifference." Throughout the series, Koenig explores narrative and visual dissonances in order to highlight the inexplicability of the Holocaust itself. Inventor of the polychromatic gumoil process, a labor-intensive and highly manipulated method, Koenig creates monotypes, each existing as an unique object.

What is the difference between writing a novel about the Holocaust and fabricating a memoir? Do narratives about the Holocaust have a special obligation to be 'truthful'--that is, faithful to the facts of history?
Or is it okay to lie in such works?

In her provocative study A Thousand Darknesses, Ruth Franklin investigates these questions as they arise in the most significant works of Holocaust fiction, from Tadeusz Borowski's Auschwitz stories to Jonathan Safran Foer's postmodernist family history. Franklin argues that the memory-obsessed culture of the last few decades has...