Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    In the Land of Armadillos
    In the Land of Armadillos
    In the Land of Armadillos
    Audiobook9 hours

    In the Land of Armadillos

    Written by Helen Maryles Shankman

    Narrated by Elizabeth Wiley

    5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    1942. With the Nazi Party at the height of its power, the occupying army empties Poland's towns and cities of their Jewish populations. As neighbor turns on neighbor and survival often demands unthinkable choices, Poland has become a moral quagmire-a place of shifting truths and blinding ambiguities.

    Blending folklore and fact, Helen Maryles Shankman shows us the people of Wlodawa, a remote Polish town. We meet a cold-blooded SS officer dedicated to rescuing the Jewish creator of his son's favorite picture book; a Messiah who appears in a little boy's bedroom to announce that he is quitting; a young Jewish girl who is hidden by the town's most outspoken anti-Semite-and his talking dog. And walking among these tales are two unforgettable figures: the enigmatic and silver-tongued Willy Reinhart, commandant of the forced labor camp who has grand schemes to protect "his" Jews, and Soroka, the Jewish saddlemaker and his family, struggling to survive.

    Channeling the mythic magic of classic storytellers and the psychological acuity of modern-day masters, In the Land of Armadillos is a testament to the persistence of humanity in the most inhuman conditions.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateMar 29, 2016
    ISBN9781515972228
    In the Land of Armadillos
    Author

    Helen Maryles Shankman

    Helen Maryles Shankman’s stories have been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes. She was a finalist in Narrative Magazine’s Story Contest and earned an Honorable Mention in Glimmer Train’s Short Story Award for New Writers competition. Her stories have appeared in The Kenyon Review, Gargoyle, Cream City Review, 2 Bridges Review, Grift, Jewishfiction.net, and other publications. She is the author of the critically acclaimed novel The Color of Light and the story collection They Were Like Family to Me. She lives in New Jersey, with her husband and four children.

    Related to In the Land of Armadillos

    Related audiobooks

    Jewish Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Saboteur Of Auschwitz

      Sep 12, 2019

      Author Colin Rushton Publisher Summersdale Publishers Price £8.99 Released Out now When soldier Arthur Dodd returned to England following VE Day on 8 May 1945, he was carrying a heavy burden that extended beyond the hardships of serving in World Wa

      1 min read

    • Article

      With A Bang

      Oct 29, 2020

      With A Bang
      3 min read

    • Article

      A Time Of Miracles

      Oct 16, 2023

      A Time Of Miracles
      3 min read

    • Article

      The Minders

      Oct 7, 2020

      RELEASED OUT NOW! 448 pages | Paperback/ebook/audiobook Author John Marrs Publisher Del Rey John Marrs’s latest near future, high-concept techno-thriller isn’t so much a sequel to The One (DNA dating app has dark secret) and Passengers (autonomous ca

      1 min read

    • Article

      Auschwitz Is Not a Metaphor

      Jun 6, 2019

      Auschwitz Is Not a Metaphor
      9 min read

    • Article

      Sins Of My Grandfather

      Feb 21, 2020

      Sins Of My Grandfather
      10 min read

    • Article

      Remains

      Sep 1, 2017

      THIS IS what you think your mother’s remains will look like. The ash will be black, like all that soot in the fireplace. It will be heavy, like wet sand. There will not be too much of it. It will fit in a small urn with intricate designs on the borde

      6 min read

    • Article

      The Cancer Celebrities

      Nov 1, 2021

      The Cancer Celebrities
      6 min read

    • Article

      Key Chain

      Feb 19, 2019

      Key Chain
      10 min read

    • Article

      Femi Kayode

      Feb 4, 2021

      Femi Kayode
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Outcome of Leila Slimani’s ‘The Perfect Nanny’ Can Only Be Disastrous

      Feb 9, 2018

      Reviews of award-winning, international sensation The Perfect Nanny by Leila Slimani have made much of the first line, “The baby is dead.” The first three pages pull no punches. There are graphic descriptions of two dead children in a Paris apartment

      3 min read

    • Article

      Kathryn Hughes

      Nov 4, 2021

      ‘The Memory Box is my fifth book, which began life with a simple image of an old lady celebrating her 100th birthday in the care home where she lives. However, instead of being surrounded by friends and family, she’s in the company of strangers who h

      1 min read

    • Article

      Looking for Katalin Street

      Mar 26, 2018

      Looking for Katalin Street
      8 min read

    • Article

      La Otra Historia

      Jun 30, 2022

      La Otra Historia
      14 min read

    • Article

      Readers’ Letters

      Dec 13, 2023

      SIR: I found Dunphy's cartoon about incompatible typefaces (November issue) most amusing, not least because it reminded me of a verse I wrote during a few moments of boredom in a meeting at which typefaces suitable for exhibition posters were being d

      3 min read

    • Article

      My Dad’s Ode To Autumn

      Oct 20, 2021

      My Dad’s Ode To Autumn
      5 min read

    • Article

      A Picture Of Dear Raymond

      Aug 24, 2022

      One of the great joys of Raymond Briggs’s column in The Oldie was that we got two geniuses for the price of one. As well as receiving his charming sideways look at life in the column, we got one of his peerless drawings every month. A compilation was

      3 min read

    • Article

      I'll Be Seeing You

      Mar 1, 2023

      I'll Be Seeing You
      25 min read

    • Article

      Typewriter

      Aug 2, 2021

      Chère Madame. Vous ne vous rappelleriez pas de moi, mais de ma part… Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap… She flicks the return bar – PING – and her fingers fall back into rhythm. Catherine’s French comes as naturally as the movement of her

      5 min read

    • Article

      The Beyoğlu Municipality Waste Management Orchestra

      Jun 8, 2021

      Selim the half-wit hoarded everything—that was the story they told me my first day in waste management. Selim had lost his wife, and I guess everyone figured he took up hoarding as a way to fill the void. It started out with stuff his wife might have

      24 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for In the Land of Armadillos

    5/5

    18 ratings7 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      This is a collection of short stories featuring characters that lived during the Holocaust. All of these stories connect in brilliant web of sorrow, fear, death, family, love and human connection. The first story was the most captivating to me with the account of the little girl following. I love the use of magical realism. Actually, I loved the story of Tobias best. I am so happy I chose to read this. It will stay with me a long time.
    • 5/5
      Who will live and who will die? Who will survive the Nazi occupation of the dreamy Polish hamlet of Wlodawa? Two-time Pushcart Prize nomine Helen Maryles Shankman weaves historical fact and Jewish folklore in the eight haunting tales of In the Land of Armadillos. In the title story we meet a gifted painter and writer—the consumptive captive of a notorious SS officer—whose painted subjects become unwitting recipients of a blessing. Imbued with a kind of haunting mysticism, we are kept wondering until the final perfect sentence.In The Partizans a werewolf fights to save his childhood love from death, and a common grave.Next, a gangster becomes a reluctant savior in The Messiah, a story that blurs the edges between astronomical anomalies and miracles.In They Were Like Family to Me a priest searches for his father’s humanity at the edge of a strange empty lot where the grass mysteriously stays green, even in the dead of winter.In The Jew Hater a little copper-haired girl who can talk with animals cracks open and heals a hardened heart.A handsome golem mysteriously appears one night in The Golem of Zukow, just where he is most needed.Willy Reinhart, charming businessman, lover of beautiful creatures and beautiful craftsmanship, believes he can save his community of Jewish artisans and their families until the bitter-sweet end, in A Decent Man.Though presented as a collection of short stories, all are connected by the same characters, events and places, and In the Land of Armadillos reads like a multiple viewpoint novel. Full of surprises, Shankman’s prose is clean, and disarmingly simple, until she steps from the shadows and you realize you have been under her cleverly woven spell all along. One aspect of her dialogue I particularly enjoyed, though it was deeply disturbing when I realized what she was doing, was how much like our modern-day coworkers and neighbors her Polish characters occasionally sounded; a subtle reminder that these disturbing conversations could take place here, today.Despite being about the Holocaust, this novel is not all grim. Though there are appalling events aplenty, these share focus with the survivors and acts of heroism. The harsh reality behind the story of Wlodawa is further relieved by really excellent writing. And the novel ends, in a brief epilogue-like non-story that reveals a healed past and leaves readers hopeful.I absolutely loved everything about this brilliant little historical novel, and will be keeping it for my shelf. Highly recommended.
    • 5/5
      The first story, In the Land of Armadillos, is worth the price of admission. Marlyes Shankman creates such colorful imagery and beauty with her writing that she somehow brings a humanity to the horrors she is depicting. The holocaust is never an easy subject to read or remember, but she manages to give grace and sometimes a needed irony to the victims of the Nazi occupation. This is so well-written with a bit of whimsy and magical realism that it is one of my favorite reads of 2016.provided by publisher u
    • 5/5
      When I finished the first story, which is the title story and the one the cover harkens to, I literally put the book down, stunned. I found it to be one of the most vivid and astonishing stories I have read for quite some time. The author's use of magical realism was perfect, fit the story perfectly. All I could think was, "Wow."These are connected stories, you will find characters from one blending into another. A small village in Poland that finds itself immersed in the terror of the Third Reich when the Nazi's come to clean out the village of undesirables. The first and last stories are narrated by Nazi officers. All these stories are fantastic and give a complete look from different sides of how this horror effected and forever changed this small village. Hard stories to read, how can people do this to other people, and in this novel we find out how some who had to believe they were doing the right thing, ordered to do this, coped.Magical realism is again in many of the stories and used to great effect. Colors abound, beautiful sunrises, sunshine reflected off buildings, cheery trees blossoming great beauty alongside savagery.Life does go on, the sun does keep shining, but how? Why should it when it ended for a great many.I think this is the first book of short stories I have ever rated five stars, how could I not when each story had a little awe inspiring twist at the end, something that really sets in and makes you think. An absolutely amazing book.ARC from Netgalley.
    • 5/5
      Wow. fact meets fiction in a brilliant new style.
    • 5/5
      What exactly is this book? One could consider it as a sort of Schindler's List written as an adult folk tale. Or one could view it as a beautifully crafted retelling of the author's family in a very complex and trying time. It markets itself as a collection of stories, but it is really a slightly disjointed novel drawn heavily on real events. And it is masterfully written.
    • 4/5
      This collection of interconnected short stories holds considerable promise: magic realism meets WWII-era occupied Poland. I loved the architecture, how the stories looped around unexpectedly and became one tangled mess. The best stories were superb, layered tales of beauty and astonishment. These are stories where brutal reality and heartfelt magic collide against a backdrop of vivid color.As a whole though, In the Land of Armadillos left an acidic taste in my mouth that gives me pause to honor this book with the highest praise. How can I best describe it? At their best, the stories in this collection are heartbreaking and relevant, but the stories can grow a bit maudlin, a tad overcloying in their sentimentality. If Hallmark commissioned Salman Rushdie to produce a WWII miniseries for their network, I think it would look a little like this. It wouldn't necessarily be a bad production, but it would feel off, you know what I'm saying?