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"its me david" - i need help

41 replies

withagoat · 07/03/2011 13:57

where and WHEN was the conc camp he was escaping for - turkey?
and at one point he says he wants books dated pre 1917 so "they " havent read them

?Russia

hayulp

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nickelprincess · 07/03/2011 13:59

i thought the point was that you didn't ever find out where he started and what year it was?
Confused

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iskra · 07/03/2011 14:01

I love that book, & I have always wondered the same thing.

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ZZZenAgain · 07/03/2011 14:02

I didn't think there was any clue to it in the book that I picked up on at least

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iskra · 07/03/2011 14:03

according to Wikipedia he is escaping from a camp in Bulgaria.

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ZZZenAgain · 07/03/2011 14:03

Bulgaria?

Wouldn't have thought of that tbh

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iskra · 07/03/2011 14:05

Also according to the internet it's set after 1953 (because there is a reference to there being a queen in England).

However, & parts of the internet agree with me, I actually think it's not set anywhere or any place - it's a generalised tale if you like.

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nickelprincess · 07/03/2011 14:06

but then. iskra - it could have been set before 1908. (or whatever year Victoria died - i can't remember Shock )

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ZZZenAgain · 07/03/2011 14:06

Interesting. Can you link to the wiki page you read? I tried but couldn't find it on there for some reason (just out of interest...)

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iskra · 07/03/2011 14:09

nickeprincess, yes however concentration camps didn't really exist like that before the death of Victoria (apart from the camps used by the British for the Boers in South Africa), & there is a clear Communist aspect.

Here's the Wiki page - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_David - it's not very good.

If you google it various book reviews etc come up for it though. Nothing particularly illuminating.

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ZZZenAgain · 07/03/2011 14:13

thanks, was googling the wrong title. Read it a long time ago and couldn't remember that much detail

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iskra · 07/03/2011 14:15

Yes - the title in the thread title is wrong Smile

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nickelprincess · 07/03/2011 14:19

no, i know.
Grin

was just adding to the debate. Grin

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PrettyCandles · 07/03/2011 14:24

I always thought it was somewhere in southern Yugoslavia.

I think the writer has been very careful to make it a non-Nazi prison camp. It's more like a Communist labour camp.

The first place David heads to, IIRC, is the port of Salonika, which is not all that far from the northern border with the former Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia started becoming a unified country after the 1st World War, and became a repressive quasi-Communist regime after the 2nd WW. (Again, IIRC!).

This timescale fits fairly neatly with the story.

That's my theory, anyway.

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ZZZenAgain · 07/03/2011 14:27

oh I see so he has escaped from a communist labour camp? I wondered because Bulgaria did not really have those kind of Nazi concentration camps to my (admittedly limited) knowledge. I know they had labour camps to which Jewish men were sent - but the history of Bulgaria's resistance to anti-semitism in WW2 is quite well-known.

Maybe there were concentration camps there I don't know, I thought there were not.

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ZZZenAgain · 07/03/2011 14:30

book

book about the Bulgarian Jews in WW2

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PrettyCandles · 07/03/2011 14:53

Is David Jewish? I though he wasn't but was in some way connected, perhaps having Jewish relatives or mentors.

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ZZZenAgain · 07/03/2011 14:54

I don't know, really I read this book so long ago but I assumed so, yes. Maybe OP knows?

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nickelprincess · 07/03/2011 14:55

i think it's something like that - he says at one point about him being sure there's more than one god, because the priest is talking to him about God, and says that it's the same god, and he said it isn't the same god.

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PrettyCandles · 07/03/2011 14:59

He's been imprisoned with, and brought up by, men of many cultures and fairly high levels of education, so it's quite possible that he had been exposed to many different philosophies. I certainly had the impression that the prisoners were very tolerant of each other. And then the priest tells him that there's only one way of thinking about god, when David has seen quite clearly that there are many ways.

Come to think of it, doesn't he make up his own prayers?

I'm going to have to re-read it!

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ZZZenAgain · 07/03/2011 15:00

yes I am going to have to reread it too. See there is a film based on this book

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Themumsnot · 07/03/2011 15:19

I always thought the author was deliberately making David's background vague, although it seems clear the camp he is escaping from is in post-war Eastern Europe. As far as I can remember he doesn't know if he is Jewish or not but comes to the conclusion that he isn't.

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withagoat · 07/03/2011 17:26

oh GOD i forgot about this thread

right

will read

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withagoat · 07/03/2011 17:26

bulgaria

blimey
"& parts of the internet agree with me"

lol

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withagoat · 07/03/2011 17:27

why is a kid IN a labour camp
com or nazi?

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ZZZenAgain · 07/03/2011 17:28

well nazi you know would have been a waiting room to death, some dc were there for a while...

communist I don't know. The mother is elsewhere - in Denmark or some place so I don't know why the boy would have been interned or even how old he is supposed to be. I mean is he 15 or 9?

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