Notable Literature on Forgiveness

Another book has appeared in my home library, positioned within my “favorites” section on the bookshelves labeled Forgiveness. The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult is a powerful story. Inspired, to a degree, by Simon Wiesenthal’s The Sunflower, which was part narrative and part symposium, the author of The Storyteller portrays diverse perspectives on forgiveness by different individuals in the form of fiction. From the grandchild of a holocaust survivor, to the Jewish grandmother herself, to a Nazi SS—both while he was young in the thick of an ideological system and as a 92 year old who had escaped judgment and lived out his life, onto a government employed Nazi hunter, a Catholic ex-nun, and then, uniquely, a proper grim fairytale of an upiór and his struggle with regret running right down the middle of it all. Very creative! Various personal and religious beliefs come into view – all of which one cannot agree, nevertheless, this novel was über captivating. Thought provoking, it leaves you haunted with those moral questions and answers that are so hard to define. And who could not deeply appreciate the truly eloquent prose of lines such as: “Then I ran faster than I’d ever run into the night, which bled like a mortal wound between the trees.” Sigh. So, if you can’t quite grasp the ethnic cleansing horrors and/or dilemmas with forgiveness (after all, the boundaries of right and wrong are narrow), there is the beautiful writing that paints such a vivid picture it’s unlikely you’ll ever forget.

“It’s easy to say you will do what’s right and shun what’s wrong, but when you get close enough to any given situation, you realize that there is no black or white. There are gradations of gray.” (Leo/hunter of Nazis, The Storyteller/Jodi Picoult)