A Pearl in the Levite Crown: Fred Wander’s The Seventh Well

One would have hoped that the publication of Michael Hofmann’s superb translation of Fred Wander’s novel The Seventh Well (New York 2008) might finally help secure Wander’s text the attention it deserves, alas, as yet to no avail. Fred Wander, probably best known (if at all) as the widower and executor of Maxie Wander, was a survivor of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. First published in East Berlin in 1971, The Seventh Well is a semi-fictionalized account of his experiences in the camps (and an attempt to lend those of his peers who did not survive a posthumous voice).