The Street Sweeper

Elliot Perlman

I doubt I would ever have read this book had it not been a choice within my book club. And what a loss, it would have been. This book is epic in its historical reach and attempt to draw linkages between the Holocaust and the American Civil Rights movement, as well as dealing with family relationship issues as two men fight to survive in contemporary New York.

One of those men is Lamont Williams, an African American on parole, desperate to keep his job as a janitor at a city hospital. The opening chapter sets the tone for his story as he sweats through a nerve-wracking bus journey; a journey upon which his job depends. His future, which includes the hope he will one day find and be reunited with his daughter, is shown to dangle by a thread where one false move, or an irate passenger who might make him late, could jeopardise everything. He becomes the unlikely friend of a hospital patient, a Holocaust survivor, who recounts his experiences in a Nazi concentration camp.

A second man, Adam Zignelik, is struggling with relationships and a floundering academic career. As a consequence of his friendship with a colleague, a man keen to find evidence that black US soldiers were present and assisted Jewish prisoners during the liberation of the concentration camps, he comes across a treasure trove of early, first-hand audio recordings made by an academic who travelled to war-torn Europe to interview survivors. Adam is changed by listening to these extraordinary stories of the scarred and dispossessed.

The story weaves together the lives and memories of many of the characters or narrators of harrowing personal histories. There are strong themes around the importance of retelling man’s most inhumane acts of barbarity particularly, here, against the Jews and African Americans. It embodies the cry, ‘Tell everyone what happened here’.

I have read and seen many accounts of the Holocaust but, other than Styron’s ‘Sophie’s Choice’, I am less familiar with an American viewpoint. It brought a new perspective, not so much to the Auschwitz survivor’s story, but to Lamont’s reaction to the tale. And the historical details of the circumstances that generated the Civil Rights movement were equally disturbing and enlightening for a UK/Australian reader less versed in the events of that time. It is several months since I read this book and wonder how much more pertinent it would be today.

Finally, there is the fascination surrounding those audio recordings made in the immediate aftermath of World War II. They hold both technological and social history appeal. Take the trouble to follow links in the back of the book to find out more!

Conclusion: It’s a doorstop and a tough read but, ultimately, rewarding - 4 stars