A New York Times Criticsâ Best Nonfiction Book of 2021
Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Biography
From a gifted young writer, the story of his quest to reclaim his familyâs apartment building in Polandâand of the astonishing entanglement with Nazi treasure hunters that follows
Menachem Kaiserâs brilliantly told story, woven from improbable events and profound revelations, is set in motion when the author takes up his Holocaust-survivor grandfatherâs former battle to reclaim the familyâs apartment building in Sosnowiec, Poland. Soon, he is on a circuitous path to encounters with the long-time residents of the building, and with a Polish lawyer known as âThe Killer.â A surprise discoveryâthat his grandfatherâs cousin not only survived the war, but wrote a secret memoir while a slave laborer in a vast, secret Nazi tunnel complexâleads to Kaiser being adopted as a virtual celebrity by a band of Silesian treasure seekers who revere the memoir as the indispensable guidebook to Nazi plunder. Propelled by rich original research, Kaiser immerses readers in profound questions that reach far beyond his personal quest. What does it mean to seize your own legacy? Can reclaimed property repair rifts among the living? Plunder is both a deeply immersive adventure story and an irreverent, daring interrogation of inheritanceâmaterial, spiritual, familial, and emotional.