For It is Battle Enough Having a Past Such As This to Confess: a Comparative Analysis of Agate Nesaule's a Woman in Amber and Imre Kertész's Fatelessness

A man of Jewish origin from Hungary, a woman of Latvian origin in the USA. A Nobel Prize winning author, a professor of literature. What do they have in common? Two different lives, two different backgrounds, two different journeys of the soul, finally resulting in two pieces of literary work: Agate Nesaule?s A Woman in Amber and Imre Kertész?s Fatelessness. Nesaule classified her book as a memoir, whereas Kertész insists that his writing is a novel. The objective of this paper is to understand and revaluate the genres of these works, so I am going to submit ideas and suggestions concerning them. While focusing on the original question, two writings dealing with crisis-situations, traumas and recoveries, two excellent pieces of work is being presented to the curious reader. In the end, when all have been said, whether the question of genre classification still remains to be a crucial one, let the kind reader decide.