Screenwriter Predicts the Holocaust
A Book of Miracles
Publication: New York: Viking Press, 1939. First Edition.
Notes: A collection of seven novellas, each a sort of religious fantasy. In one, Hecht imagines a soul imprisoned in a steel girder; in another, he considers the fate of an angel come down from heaven.
His story, The Little Candle, predicts the Holocaust, opening "on that dreadful July morning" when "we learned that overnight some five hundred thousand Jews had been murdered in Germany, Italy, Rumania, and Poland." The killing continued; an American rabbi commits suicide and a miracle results. "The meaning of the miracle was that, when all the rages of man had spent themselves, and the world lay in unholy chaos...out of the unconsumed soul of the Jew God's light would rise again."
Hecht, the son of Russian Jews, is best known as one of the leading screenwriters of the mid-20th century.
465 pages.
Edition + Condition: First edition (first printing, stating "First published in June 1939" on the copyright page). A very good copy (minor stains to a few pages; paper adhesion on the rear pastedown) in a good gold dust jacket, chipped at the edges, missing a shallow piece at the top of the spine, and with scratches on the rear panel. A few tape repairs on the back (verso) of the jacket.
This copy has a bookplate inscribed by the author mounted on the half-title page using picture corners, "To James Gallagher, Ben Hecht."
Provenance: The collector James Strand, with his small estate bookplate on the front free endpaper.
Item No: #231760
Price: $85