It's difficult to be critical of Holocaust literature; readers and reviewers alike can become emotionally invested in the stories like few other genres. Thankfully, from the most devastating of circumstances, much genius work has been penned. THE MORNING STAR by André Schwarz-Bart is no exception. It tells the story of Haim Lebke, a Polish Jew, and through him, beautifully reveals Eastern European Jewry before, during and after World War II.

Haim is one of several sons of a drunken cobbler. He lives in a town where the Jews are under constant threat from the Poles, and the young people, led by his own brother --- the charismatic and strong Schlomo --- are becoming increasingly drawn to Zionism. But before they can emigrate to Palestine, the Nazis arrive, and Haim's parents and Schlomo are murdered. Haim, not yet 13 years old, gathers up his younger brothers and heads for the woods. There they survive together before finding their way to the Warsaw ghetto. The ghetto proves to be the death of Haim's brothers, and he is alone. But Haim survives the war and lands in France, part of a community of survivors who all have their own ways of coping with the destruction they witnessed and experienced.

Schwarz-Bart draws on traditional Jewish folktales and religious myth, and thus interweaves the fantastic and miraculous into his story of trauma, violence, redemption and survival. The narrative swings between dreamy fantastic and hyper-realistic. Yet the novel is successful in its pace, storytelling and character formation.

Years later, the aging Haim is married to a young woman named Sarah, and together they travel to Israel and then to Poland. This journey, marked by the birth of his own child and his return home, is just as miraculous for Haim as the tales of holy visitors and mystical events that pepper the novel. The powerful simplicity of Haim waking beside his pregnant wife in a hotel room near Auschwitz with a prayer on his lips is a brilliant contrast to the background story of Haim Lebke's ancestor, Haim Yaacov, who channels the sacred through his violin.

Like Haim Yaacov, Haim Lebke has a musical gift that provides solace to those around him; but the holiness of these men (and the others like them) cannot save their people from pogroms and genocide. As Haim Lebke ages and the Holocaust moves into the realm of history (his wife is the daughter of survivors), the danger looming is not just the nuclear bombs that will be dropped in the future, but the danger of forgetting the Holocaust itself (perhaps allowing for another such event and dishonoring the dead by failing to remember them).

THE MORNING STAR was an unfinished manuscript when Schwarz-Bart died and his widow Simone completed the work on the novel. It is framed by an odd story about a woman, Linemarie, who is descended from the only survivors of a nuclear war on Earth. Drawn to the story of her ancestors thousands of years in the past, she uncovers their lives back to Haim Lebke and the town of Podhoretz, Poland. While Linemarie's part of the book is an interesting opening to the story, it is not fully realized at the end and so the novel feels abruptly resolved. However, Schwarz-Bart's tale is so compelling, horrific, imaginative and mesmerizing, the flaws of the final product are easily forgiven.

Haim Lebke is a fascinating hero: poetic and philosophical, yet totally grounded and relatable. The other characters here are often quite finely drawn as well. Schwarz-Bart, himself orphaned during the Holocaust at the age of 13, has contributed an amazing novel, not just to collections dedicated to the Holocaust, but also to world literature. Deeply personal with so many points of overlap with his own life, Schwarz-Bart's final work is nothing short of important and nothing less than astonishing.