Fans pick 100 books like The Drowned and the Saved

This novel left me feeling both teary-eyed and ennobled. Superficially, it is about two French sisters living through the Nazi occupation of France during World War II. At its root, however, Hannah deconstructs the essence of survival.

I loved how her characters frame the book’s cosmic questions: What would you do to survive? What compromises would you make? Is it better to fight back aggressively or resist passively? The sisters are of different temperaments and personalities. Each answers these questions differently, painfully. I found myself haunted by these themes long after I put The Nightingale back on the shelf. You will, too.

The author held me spellbound as she skilfully unpacked the remarkable story of Louis Zamperini, who survived a plane crash at sea only to be taken prisoner by the Japanese.

Zamperini’s life leapt from the page and swept me along a chilling pathway that bore witness to his physical and inner strength. Hillenbrand held me riveted to the last page of this remarkable true story.

Vonnegut’s book is a unique combination of satire, science fiction, and raw war critique. Billy Pilgrim, the protagonist, lives out the trauma of surviving the Dresden bombing by becoming "unstuck in time," drifting through different moments of his life, from past to future. This strange, nonlinear structure mirrors how we process trauma in fragments and waves, never in a neat, chronological order. The randomness of death, the meaninglessness of war—all these themes come together in a way that’s both absurd and deeply moving. As we witness terror and violence continually unfold across the globe, the echoes of Slaughterhouse-Five feel ever-present.

The phrase “So it goes” serves as a refrain throughout the novel, after every death—reminding us of the inevitability of loss in wartime, no matter the scale. This book hit me hard with its dark humor and cynical commentary on the glorification of war. Vonnegut forces you to laugh in… show more.

I never imagined becoming completely absorbed by a quasi-philosophical meditation about survival—especially not by a self-styled Spanish intellectual and Communist with a capital "C." I became entranced, however, by Jorge Semprun’s inner struggle to find the words to convey his experiences in the Buchenwald concentration camp.

Of course, he does find the words—powerful, incisive, kinetic – though it took him 50+ years to do so. Why so long? Because, he writes, had he tried to turn his trauma into “literature” earlier, he might well have committed suicide. Instead, he chose life - and went on to co-author Z, the 1970 double-Oscar-winning film, and serve as Minister of Culture in post-Franco Spain. 

I enjoyed how the author, a musician herself, masterfully depicts the entire spectrum of human experience: joy, passion, cruelty, love, longing, endless guilt, and a sense of peace, all accompanied by thoughtful insights. Her passion for music is only matched by her longing for homemade Hungarian cuisine… a painful story told in a sensitive and aesthetic manner. 

This is a shattering account of a man who was forced to work in the gas chambers of Auschwitz for several years. Not only did he see the serial mass murder up close, but he also witnessed the failed rebellion at Crematorium IV on October 7, 1944. Müller’s writing is sparse and harrowing as he describes daily life in the Third Reich’s largest concentration camp. This is an essential document about the Holocaust and it helps the reader understand what it meant to be part of the Sonderkommando—those unfortunate prisoners who were forced to work in the gas chambers and crematoria. This is an unforgettable and vital book.

This is an older book, but such an important one! It was first published in 1993 when the author was commissioned by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) to create a book and an exhibit for younger children who would be touring the museum. Carol Matas is really one of the first authors to write about this time in history and to do so in a way this is accessible for young readers. She has paved the way for authors like me to continue telling these important stories. By the way, if you visit the USHMM, you can still see the Daniel's Story exhibit on the main floor of the museum. 

In April 1944, Rudolf Vrba became the first Jew to escape from Auschwitz—one of only four who ever pulled off that near-impossible feat. His aim was to reveal the truth of the death camp to the world—and to warn the still surviving Jews of his native Czechoslovakia and Hungary and the world of the nature of Nazi policy towards the Jews. 

Sadly, his warnings were not taken sufficiently seriously. The problem was the inability of those to whom he reported to take in the full implications of the ‘final solution.’ Vrba was tormented for the rest of his life (he died in Canada in 2006) by his failure to persuade his interlocutors of what was actually taking place in Auschwitz.

If Lothar Orbach survived in Berlin by creeping about in the shadows, Freddie did the opposite. This Viennese Jew brazenly entered the lion’s den of Nazi-occupied Paris and hobnobbed with the Wehrmacht. His true story is so amazing it would seem preposterous in a novel. Freddie left Austria after Hitler’s annexation of his country, and aged 20, with a false Aryan identity, he headed for the City of Lights. There he befriended Nazi soldiers and sold them his services as a guide to the red-light district, thereby earning commission from the nightspots and brothels to which he ushered them. "In reality I was a pimp," he writes. "But I didn’t consider it a situation I should be ashamed of. Because it saved my life." His luck ran out when a spurned lover betrayed him to the Gestapo, and he ended up in Auschwitz. Thankfully this remarkably resourceful man stayed alive…but… show more.

I first read Auschwitz and After in a university course focused on the Holocaust. Toward the course’s end, in a section focusing on memoirs, this book followed Elie Wiesel’s Night and Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz. While Weisel and Levi’s works are both undeniably masterpieces, Delbo’s work stood out to me because of its form and its feminist perspective. Delbo, a French partisan who was captured and deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, lays bare in her work the ways in which gender affected the camp experience. It illuminated to me the different and similar ways in which men and women responded to the horrors of the extermination camps. Furthermore, Delbo’s work is not a linear narrative. Instead, it combines poetry and other non-traditional forms to create a memoir of an experience that Delbo readily admitted language was not equipped to capture. I recommend the work for the ways in which it… show more.