You know almost from the beginning what's going to happen at the end of "Badenheim 1939."… And yet when the final catastrophe actually befalls the Jewish inhabitants of "the holiday resort of Badenheim, the Music Festival city" …, it comes as a considerable shock.

In fact it seems a transition to a different order of reality, one that makes you look back on the novel's previous developments as part of a feverish but slightly romantic dream. And this, you suddenly perceive, is approximately what the real thing must have been like: no matter how grim the forebodings of what was to come, no one could have anticipated what was actually to happen. All of which means that the full impact of "Badenheim 1939" sneaks up on you. To say the very least.

This is especially true because the novel gets off to an inauspicious start….

I was thrown at first by...