Come to This Court and Cry

Author Linda Kinstler
Narrator Laurence Bouvard
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing
Run Time 9 hours and 34 minutes
Format Audio
Genre History, International law, Law, Second World War, The Holocaust.

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What to expect

*A TABLET AND WALL STREET JOURNAL BOOK OF THE YEAR*

Shortlisted for the Wingate Literary Prize

‘A tremendous feat of storytelling, propelled by numerous twists and revelations, yet anchored by a deep moral seriousness . . . Enthralling‘ Guardian

‘Part detective story, part family history, part probing inquiry into how best to reckon with the horrors of a previous century . . . Astonishing‘ Patrick Radden Keefe, author of Empire of Pain

‘Outstanding‘ Philippe Sands, author of The Ratline and East West Street
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To probe the past is to submit the memory of one's ancestors to a certain kind of trial. In this case, the trial came to me.

A few years ago Linda Kinstler discovered that a man fifty years dead – a former Nazi who belonged to the same killing unit as her grandfather – was the subject of an ongoing criminal investigation in Latvia. The proceedings threatened to pardon his crimes. They put on the line hard-won facts about the Holocaust at the precise moment that the last living survivors – the last legal witnesses – were dying.

Across the world, Second World War-era cases are winding their way through the courts. Survivors have been telling their stories for the better part of a century, and still judges ask for proof. Where do these stories end? What responsibilities attend their transmission, so many generations on? How many ghosts need to be put on trial for us to consider the crime scene of history closed?

In this major non-fiction debut, Linda Kinstler investigates both her family story and the archives of ten nations to examine what it takes to prove history in our uncertain century. Probing and profound, Come to this Court and Cry is about the nature of memory and justice when revisionism, ultra-nationalism and denialism make it feel like history is slipping out from under our feet. It asks how the stories we tell about ourselves, our families and our nations are passed down, how we alter them, and what they demand of us.

'Kinstler 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' Anne Applebaum

'A masterpiece' Peter Pomerantsev

Critics Review

Victims and perpetrators meet in Kinstler’s bloodline, but family history is only one strand of a remarkable book that braids together her own rigorously reported investigations in 10 countries with the survivors’ eight-decade quest for justice and poetic meditations on such subjects as history, law, Latvian identity, Franz Kafka and the politics of remembrance. This is a tremendous feat of storytelling, propelled by numerous twists and revelations, yet anchored by a deep moral seriousness
Guardian
Combines meticulous historical research with philosophical inquiries into nationalism, holocaust denial, guilt and the burden of proof. This is an invaluable and highly readable account of not only one family’s story, but also of a period on the cusp of passing from living memory
New Internationalist
[A] remarkable new book . . . There is a complex and powerful family story here . . . Asks large questions about the capacity of historical and legal practice to encompass the moral horror of the Holocaust, and about what justice is, or has ever been, possible
The Critic
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 21st century, to keep telling the history of the 20th
Anne Applebaum
Obviously a masterpiece. A book that makes the Holocaust fresh, slipping seamlessly between story, thinking, politics, poetry and the personal
Peter Pomerantsev, author of THIS IS NOT PROPAGANDA
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. Linda Kinstler has threaded the needle. This book is many things, and yet it fits together perfectly . . . It’s a marvel
Menachem Kaiser, author of PLUNDER
First I was moved, then I was gripped and now I am haunted by Linda Kinstler’s astonishing new book
Ben Judah, author of THIS IS LONDON
The atrocities of the twentieth century have still not passed, still less the effects of the period’s most pernicious secrets. Now a new generation is reckoning with the crimes of the Holocaust and the dark shadows of the Cold War. In this brilliant and compelling book, Linda Kinstler takes us back to Latvia, to her family history, and to a question which – in our new age of fascist-tolerance – is more urgent still: what is justice?
Lyndsey Stonebridge
Implicit in Kinstler’s heart-breaking narrative is a key question. How, when the victims of these hideous crimes are all gone, can we uphold the truth and deny the deniers?
Julia Boyd, author of TRAVELLERS IN THE THIRD REICH
In this searching and powerful book, Linda 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 21st century. Come to the Court and Cry is an exemplary work of investigative journalism and historical research, showing why writers like Kinstler are needed now more than ever
Adam Kirsch
In her completely absorbing and profound debut, Linda 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
Patrick Radden Keefe
A powerful and very moving account of the aftermath of the Holocaust in Latvia, & the value and meaning of different kinds of evidence, by [Linda Kinstler]. Highly recommended.
Richard Ovenden
Come to This Court and Cry is a reminder that memory is fallible, that the desire for forgetting is strong and that, when it comes to a subject so bitterly contested for so long, truth is all the more unstable
Literary Review
Exploring the tension between the justice of the courtroom and the retribution of assassination, the logic of the law and the frailty of memory, Linda Kinstler’s intelligent and thoughtful study Come to This Court and Cry utilises the story of Latvia’s wartime experience to meditate on the limits of the postwar reckoning with the Final Solution
Times Literary Supplement
The book, Ms. Kinstler’s first, is an exquisite exploration into ‘how the memory of the Holocaust extends into the present and acts upon it’
Wall Street Journal
In this gripping book, author Kinstler asks: was my grandfather a war criminal? … Kinstler chronicles her tireless investigation into anything she can glean about the life (and death) of grandfather Boris. At times, it acquires the qualities of an Agatha Christie spy novel. But she also raises fundamental philosophical issues … the gripping volume ends with more questions than answers
Jewish Chronicle
There has never been a better time to read a book such as this…As a historian, she is engaged in neither flight nor fight. She skillfully invites readers into the complexity of her craft
Sydney Morning Herald
Avoiding any simplistic or definitive conclusions, Kinstler provides a model of deep historical research and fluid, engaging narrative
New York Journal of Books
[A]n exquisite exploration
Wall Street Journal
She traces its twists and turns with patience, care, and a burning sense of integrity, bringing the reader into an answerless place between conflicting witness testimonies, between history and literary narratives, and between what is recorded as evidence and what is otherwise passed down or felt
Jewish Currents
[A] gripping debut … a deeply researched, engrossing and important look at how Holocaust stories have been passed down and altered
Washington Post

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