Nothing without a ‘but’

Item: The Hollow Tree
Author: Richard Freadman

A posthumous novel from Jacob G. Rosenberg

by Richard Freadman •

October 2009, no. 315

The Hollow Tree by Jacob G. Rosenberg

Allen & Unwin, $26.99 hb, 256 pp, 9781741759006

Nothing without a ‘but’

A posthumous novel from Jacob G. Rosenberg

by Richard Freadman •

October 2009, no. 315

Jacob Rosenberg completed the manuscript of The Hollow Tree shortly before his death in October 2008. Born in Lodz in 1922, he lived there until he was deported to Auschwitz, where he lost his entire immediate family. He was later a prisoner in the Woflsburg and Ebensee concentration camps. In 1948 he and his wife, Esther, emigrated to Australia, where they raised a family and built a successful clothing business.

Richard Freadman

Richard Freadman is Emeritus Professor of English and retired Director of the Unit for Biographical and Autobiographical Studies at La Trobe University. His books in the area of life-writing are the memoir, Shadow of Doubt: My father and myself (2003); Threads of Life: Autobiography and the will (2001); and This Crazy Thing a Life: Australian Jewish autobiography (2007). His second memoir, Stepladder to Hindsight, was published by Hybrid in 2016.