Come to This Court and Cry

“In her completely absorbing and profound debut, Kinstler sets out to solve a mystery—journeying from a murder scene in Uruguay to the former killing fields of Europe to unravel a family secret about her late grandfather—and in the process unearths vexing questions about the past and how we understand it. Part detective story, part family history, part probing inquiry into how best to reckon with the horrors of a previous century, Come to This Court and Cry is bracingly original, beautifully written, and haunting. An astonishing book.”

“Obviously a masterpiece. A book that makes the Holocaust fresh, slipping seamlessly between story, thinking, politics, poetry, and the personal.”

“Linda Kinstler has achieved something truly unusual: A book that captures the paradoxes and nuances of memory politics in contemporary Eastern Europe, while at the same time invoking the trauma that past tragedies leave on individuals and families. Using rigorous, evocative prose, she reminds us of the dangerous instability of truth and testimony, and the urgent need, in the twenty-first century, to keep telling the history of the twentieth.”

“In this searching and powerful book, Kinstler sets out to solve the mystery of her grandfather’s role in the genocide of Latvia’s Jews during World War II. But the questions she ends up confronting—about national pride, the need for heroes, and the elusiveness of the past—couldn’t be more relevant in the twenty-first century. Come to This Court and Cry is an exemplary work of investigative journalism and historical research, showing why writers like Kinstler are needed now more than ever.”

“First, I was moved, then I was gripped, and now I am haunted by Kinstler’s astonishing new book. Its story is a universal one and its contribution to Jewish thinking about the Holocaust is considerable.”

“Before reading (devouring) Come to This Court and Cry, I wouldn’t have thought a book like this was even possible. A moving family portrait on top of a sensational whodunit murder on top of a brilliant mediation on memory, the law, and identity? And yet here it is. Kinstler has threaded the needle. This book is many things, and yet it fits together perfectly—personal without being sentimental, creative without being precious, and has such astute legal and historical analyses without being ponderous; it’s a marvel.”