View sample
Buy hard copy / 24,00 EUR
Buy e-book / 20,00 EUR
Borrow e-book / 16,00 EUR
In his novel The Swimmer, Pierre Assouline tells the extraordinary life story of Alfred Nakache. Born in Constantine, Nakache was a French and European champion as well as a world record holder. As a top athlete, he represented France at the 1936 Berlin Olympics and later at the 1948 London Olympics. But between those two triumphs, he faced the greatest ordeal of his life. After being denounced by a rival as a Jew and a member of the resistance, he was deported along with his wife Paule and daughter Annie. From Auschwitz to Buchenwald, through the horrors of the death march, he survived thanks to his extraordinary willpower and sporting spirit. But how far can a person go after encountering absolute evil – and can one find the strength for the future?
The Swimmer is a powerful and inspiring journey through a century, a story about the pursuit of excellence and surpassing one’s own limits. Above all, it is a story of endurance, defiance, and the unyielding strength of the human spirit – a true life lesson.
* * *
Alfred does not yet feel the water slipping through his fingers – not yet. He has only just completed his training. For now, he swims as he breathes, carried by an immense natural energy. He lacks a serious structure. Life still lies ahead of him, but already one can sense the motion and the driving force that could carry him forward. He knows what awaits him: to swim, to dream, perhaps to win. At times to lose, to begin again, to lose better. What matters is to stay the course. To carve out a path and follow it for a lifetime. Do what you must; let come what may. It is more than a slogan – it is a decision that separates the man who swims from those who merely float. Now he knows the password for entering the water from land. He swims, and quite well. All that remains is for him to discover swimming. To set off as if answering a call, to throw himself into the water as if diving – headfirst.
* * *
A person can endure even when at the very limit. One must possess an untamable soul, both in ordinary life and in the camp, in the midst of the dark realm of Evil. Here, everything is designed to break a human being. But Alfred Nakache cannot accept a fall from which there is no rising again. He knows how to stand up to people, for he has been trained to do so – but not to a system whose purpose is annihilation. No one is prepared for that. He is not equipped to fight against the dark side of reason. But who is? His upbringing prepared him to face the span of a human life, including the usual trials of maturity, but nothing and no one prepared him to live through this. Germany can never atone for what he experienced in the camp; and the fact that Auschwitz is in Poland changes nothing.
Excerpts from the novel
- ISBN: 978-953-369-072-8
- Dimensions: 142x205 mm
- Number of pages: 184
- Cover: paperback
- Year of the edition: 2026
- Original title: Le Nageur
- Original language: French
- Translation: Dubravka Celebrini
Related titles
The Client
The Client is a novel full of unexpected twists, which makes us think about the superficial judgments we can have about the behavior of others, the story of a man possessed whose desire to understand...
Idiss
Robert Badinter, a famous French politician and lawyer, follows the fate of his grandmother Idiss, who moved with her family to Paris in 1912 due to poverty and growing antisemitism in Imperial...
Escape through the Pyrenees
Fleeing the Nazis, anti-fascist activists Lisa Fittko and her husband Hans fled Germany to the safety of France shortly before the outbreak of World War II. The French, despite the fact that Germany...