A World of Pains: A Redemptive Parable? Paperback – October 2, 2015 by Solly Kaplinski (Author), Ronit Kaplinski Mayer (Cover Design), Stephen D. Smith (Foreword)

Solly Kaplinski’s "A World of Pains"  is more a novellette than a novel. It has a interesting, sometimes emotional ( "tears" do sell)  and origial  story line but needs some editing. Does the novellette answer the question it poses in its title "A Redmptive Parable?" ?. Readers will have to decide for themselves.The book is self published and hopefully when reissued the authors will add " Dickens" like descriptions of the places and events in which the storyline  takes place and turn the novelette into a Leon Uris  "Exodus" saga and a  Koret Jewish Book Award. novel A good read ; even excellent read if treated as a novelette and recommend. The book can be purchased from Amazon.  

A World of Pains by Solly Kaplinsky ( Amazon Link) 

"A World of Pains"  takes readers to a place so dark and troubling that both perpetrators and survivors would prefer to simply leave that black box in the archive of history, best untouched. However, the psychodrama draws readers into a narrative which examines the complexity of judgement of people trapped in a world where the moral compass has been lost and monstrous excesses of human nature abound. This is an important book and in my opinion a valuable contribution to Holocaust literature and to the understanding of genocide in any form. With respect to doctrines of forgiveness, redemption and salvation, which are so readily accepted in Judeo-Christian western thinking, we are confronted head-on with these dilemmas yet, wisely, they remain unanswered.

Solly Kaplinski lives and works in Jerusalem. His late parents, of blessed memory, were Holocaust survivors who came to South Africa in 1947. They spent several years with the Bielski partisans in the Nalibocka forest in Western Belarus engaged in rescue, resistance and sabotage missions. An alumnus of Herzlia School in Cape Town, the Habonim Zionist youth movement and of the Universities of Cape Town and South Africa, Solly commenced his professional career in education as a school guidance counselor and clinical psychologist. He was the Headmaster of Jewish Community Day Schools in South Africa and Canada before immigrating to Israel with his wife in 2000. Formerly the Director of the International Relations English Desk at Yad Vashem, he is currently engaged as Executive Director, Overseas Joint Ventures, at the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. A graduate of the Jerusalem Fellows Program and of the Harvard University Principals' Center, Solly is also a published poet and author. His poetry has appeared in several university anthologies. Solly's three daughters and their families all live in Israel.