Who was Raoul Wallenberg, the 33 year old Swedish diplomat who went to Budapest
and saved approximately 17,000 Jews and indirectly another 125,000?
Why did this young Christian fellow from a very rich Stockholm family do this,
and put his comfortable life in danger? And once he was taken away to Moscowβs
Lybianka prison by the Soviets in 1945, why did he languish there for two whole
years, without being redeemed or exchanged? These were the questions of
mystery, both biographical and historical, that were never answered by the
biographers or historians, when I started my research back in 2001.
But even more vital for me and for the inspiration for the novel, was the
sculpture of Wallenberg that I passed every day near the street where I lived in
the hills of Budapest. I was teaching at ELTE, the university in Pest, but
living up in Buda with my 16 year old son,. Every day, when I went for a walk or
for shopping, I passed this imposing bronze sculpture of RW, and became more and
more interested in this figure, in his austere gaze. What did it signify? From
there I began to do my research, which took me to the archives and cities of
Moscow, and Stockholm, plus Ann Arbor Michigan, where RW had completed three
years of architecture school back in the 1930βs. Gradually as I began to get a
feel for the man, his dilemmas, his mysteries, I began also to see the dilemmas
of history, the many huge gaps and spaces in the history, concerning this
enigmatic hero and his personal and Holocaust context.
Being a novelist, I understood very comfortably how this all fit in perfectly
with my craft, intensifying my belief that only through fiction, where a writer
has the most license and liberty to invent, could some of those gaps and spaces
be filled in. Hence my novel, which is a combination of history and fictionβnot
historical fictionβor more specifically, history seen through the eyes of a
fiction writer. This presented a wonderful challenge for me-- how to get at the
deep layers about a complex man, an extreme context, a puzzling history--
through the lens of fiction. In other words, diving below the surface of facts
to get at deeper truths, more haunting and enchanting revelations. (The
fictional leaps in scenes and characters grounded in the real, guided but not
limited to the historical.)
Naturally, to fill out my multi-tiered mystery story, I had to find a suitable
cast of characters, beginning with a clever detective. Manny Gellerman, my
history professor, becomes such a clever and relentless detective, hunting down
all alleyways and nooks and strange persons to try to get at the truths. A
mysterious lady named Zsusannah Frank turns up, claiming she is the daughter of
Wallenberg and providing my detective with many enticing leads and provocative
gambits; which are real, which are false? Is she mad this woman, or
maddeningly brilliant? And what about her beautiful young daughter, Dora, is
she there to tempt Prof. Gellerman? If so, tempt him into what? Finally there is
the character of Raoul Wallenberg himself, who emerges increasingly in the
text, as a ghost who has a growing interest in the pursuit of this American
professor. This RW is a ghost with charm, with intelligence, with challenging
questions for Gellerman, and the two engage in interesting conversations,
forming a friendship that is both beguiling and probing. Not often in
literature do we find a ghost helping along an interested party in the
investigation of his own deathβexcept perhaps in the tragedy of Hamlet. Well now
here in βSearching for Wallenberg β we find such an unusual pairing and
friendship, as the mystery slowly unwinds into its unusual outcome.
This was a curious tale which surprised me the writer with its twists and turns,
with its surprising charms and challenging credibility, with its mysterious
characters and cities of deceit, so I had a very interesting journey as I moved
along in the narrative. Hopefully a reader will experience a similar ride of
roller coaster highs and sudden dips, and sly surprises and detours, leading to
a destination of new wonder, faith and β¦.well, we canβt give everything away.
About SEARCHING FOR WALLENBERG
After reading a graduate student's thesis about the fate of Raoul Wallenberg,
the Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Jews in Budapest from 1944 to 1945,
Professor Manny Gellerman--part-time detective, historian, and novelist--follows
the twists and turns along unorthodox paths and uncovers some uncomfortable
truths that may explain what happened when Wallenberg was arrested by the
Soviets in 1945, taken to Moscow, and left to fester in a Lybianka prison.
Now more than 65 years later, Gellerman begins unthreading these mysteries--and
discovers that the deepest may be Wallenberg, himself. Who was the real man
behind the legendary persona of noble diplomat and savior of Budapest Jews?
Gellerman's quest eventually leads him to a Jewish Hungarian woman, who claims
she is Raoul Wallenberg's daughter. At once a detective story and an unusual
love story, this novel within a novel is filled with multiple layers and
surprising characters that all lead to a deeper understanding of this enigmatic
hero.
About Alan Lelchuk
Alan Lelchuk is a novelist, professor, and editor from Brooklyn, New York. He
did his undergraduate work at Brooklyn College and received his Ph.D. from
Stanford University in 1965. His work has been translated into more than half a
dozen foreign languages, including Danish, Dutch, French, German, Hebrew,
Hungarian, Japanese, Russian, and Spanish.
His short fiction has appeared in such publications as Transatlantic Review, The
Atlantic, Modern Occasions, The Boston Globe Magazine, and Partisan Review.
Significant critical studies on Lelchuk have been Philip Roth in Esquire,
Wilfrid Sheed in Book-of-the-Month Club News, Bejmain DeMott in The Atlantic,
Mordechai Richler in the Chicago Tribune, Robert Towers in The New York Times,
and Steven Birkets in The New Republic.
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