In Paradise by Peter Matthiessen (review)

Twice winner of the American National Book Award (once, for an account of his expedition to study the Himalayan blue sheep), an undercover agent for the CIA in Paris (a role that he later deeply regretted), and a cofounder of The Paris Review, Matthiessen (1928–2014) was also a professional fisherman, a journalist, an environmentalist, an explorer of several regions of the world, a defender of the cause of American Indians, the author of eleven novels, and a Zen Buddhist. His last novel, In Paradise, revolves around a meditative Zen Buddhist retreat, set up in the former Nazi concentration camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau. (Matthiessen himself had been a three-time participant in such a retreat at Auschwitz.) In the novel, those arriving for the retreat include Germans and Poles; Jews and Christians, from Israel and the United States; a tantric master, who is an ex-hippie and an ex-Orthodox Jew; Catholic nuns; a Palestinian; a rabbi; and a Buddhist from Tibet. Despite their diversity, none is capable of bearing witness: each is searching for an explanation of what happened in the camp but cannot find it. While the group undergoes one amazing moment of psychological and physical unity, in the end the participants remain isolated from one another. Despite their commitment to meditation in memory of the more than one million people brutally murdered in the camp, the pilgrims come to understand that they cannot imagine the humiliation and pain that the prisoners experienced. Everyone goes home in confusion, without enlightenment.