100 Poems Without a Country

by Fried, Erich

• ISBN13: 9780714538846
• ISBN10: 0714538841
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1987-09-01
• Publisher: Calder Pubns

Summary

Always aware that he was living in an alien culture, these poems from Erich Fried (19211988) reflect the sensitivities of a Jew who could not accept an Israel that persecuted others; and who was grateful to the country that had given him shelter and protection from the Nazis despite the great number of matters that made him unsettled in England. Although Fried moved between two cultural worlds, he never lost touch with his native tongue and its literature. Collected here are moving and questioning poems about the Holocaust as well as his work on Vietnam and Chile, which illustrates his ability to combine depth of feeling with a strong grasp of political realties.

Author Biography

Austrian-born Erich Fried has become the most popular poet to write in German since Heinrich Heine, 150 years earlier. Freid came to England from Austria in 1938 as a refugee fleeing from Hitler's Nazi machine and their systematic persecution of the Jews. He joined the BBC and emerged as broadcaster, translator and poet, but always writing in German. Published in Germany after the war, he became the biggest-selling poet of the century in German. The appeal in Fried's poems lies in their direct simplicity which captures the lives of every reader whether he is writing about love, on the themes of political or moral issues or about the feelings and emotions brought on by illness, bereavement, ageing and death. Above all Fried is a poet whose humanity, honesty and perception make his verse immensely enjoyable and enlightening. Born in 1921 he died in London in 1988. Large numbers of his German fans attended the funeral as well as English fans.