Shakespeare & Co. is delighted to host a virtual launch for Vengeance is Mine (Boiler House Press, March 2026), the 1943 Holocaust novella by Friedrich Torberg available for the first time in English, on Thursday, April 2, 2026, at 7:00 pm. This event is free and open to the public.
Taking part in the event will be Stephanie Ortega, the translator of Vengeance is Mine, and Menachem Kaiser, author of Plunder: A Memoir of Family Property and Nazi Treasure, who wrote the introduction. Brad Bigelow, the editor of the Recovered Books series from Boiler House Press, will moderate the event.
About Vengeance is Mine:
One morning in November 1940, two men meet on a New Jersey dock. One, haggard and haunted, says he’s waiting for 75 refugees from Hitler’s Germany. Every day he comes, and every day he leaves—alone.
Over a drink in a nearby bar, he relates the story of his imprisonment in a pre-war Nazi concentration camp. Of the SS commandant who separated out all the Jewish inmates and set about a deliberate program to kill them one by one, by torture, beatings, or suicide. Until the day when one inmate found himself faced with a decision: was vengeance, as it says in the Torah, a matter for God alone?
Written in 1943 and never before translated into English, Vengeance is Mine [German title: Mein ist die Rache] is the first work of fiction to predict the Nazi’s final solution, their program to exterminate the Jews. Its story is short, stunning, and unforgettable: a 20th century masterpiece.
About Stephanie Ortega:
With a doctorate in German literature, Stephanie Ortega has taught in Berlin, South Africa, and the U.S. She translated Else Jerusalem’s Red House Alley for the Recovered Books series and lives in Austin, Texas.
About Menachem Kaiser:
The winner of a Fulbright scholarship, his research in Lithuania was the basis of his book Plunder: A Memoir of Family Property and Nazi Treasure, which received the 2022 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature.
About Brad Bigelow:
Brad Bigelow is a writer, teacher, and editor living in Missoula, Montana. He is the editor of the Recovered Books series for Boiler House Press and has been writer of the Neglected Books website since 2006. With more than six hundred articles, the site celebrates the work of little-known writers like Virginia Faulkner.
Stephanie Ortega
Menachem Kaiser
Brad Bigelow