FRAU GRUBER'S CAMP
by Ted Barr
What are the boundaries of evil? What is the meaning of life on the verge of arbitrary sudden death? Is it worth living behind an electric fence? Frau Gruber's Camp is a thrilling allegory about the faith of mankind in its darkest times, strongly reminiscent of George Orwell's masterpiece Animal Farm. A world that sustains people like Frau Gruber, Herr Schickl, and their morbid associates is not the same one we live in. Although in many ways their world appears to be similar, it is more of a parallel universe removed from the reality we know. However, at times the reader may overlook the differences and be drawn in. In this surprising and enigmatic novel, the reader is gently and slowly submerged into an imaginary micro-cosmos – a fantastic world that is both poetic and terrible, sometimes heart-wrenching and at other times horrifying, where life is but a transparent commodity. The roosters as human beings are just momentary visitors in a much larger play, whose meaning they are too short-sighted to comprehend (except the old rooster Ba Ba Loop that, like ancient prophets, has the eyes to see but does not possess the power to change). The only way to give meaning to such dreadful times is by committing it all to memory, which is the framework on which this novel is founded: human faith, forgetting, remembering, and the essence of life during an impossible epoch. Though taking off from a mainly conjured description of Adolf Hitler's early childhood, Frau Gruber's Camp does not stop at relating a story parallel in many ways to European Jewish history. Rather it evolves into a fable on overall human experience in the twentieth century, written through twenty-first century eyes as a contemporary bravado. The author, Ted Barr, 54, has a master’s degree in economics and varied areas of interest, including German history, symbolism, battalion and divisional tactics, and astronomy. Barr is a renowned artist, specializing in galaxies and other celestial elements. The author has developed a unique painting technique, which he teaches in workshops around the world. Barr is the founder of the Current Art Group, and his artistic activity can be viewed at his art site, www.tedpaintings.com . A Hebrew edition of Frau Gruber’s Camp was published in Israel in 2006, following Barr’s first book, Krombee, a children’s book first published in 1990. 116 pages, 14.5X21 pages
