The Keeper of Hidden Books

The Keeper of Hidden Books asserts that literature has the power to unify people by instilling empathy and bringing people together. As the Bandit Book Club meets and discusses iconic titles even amid wartime danger, Martin implies that literature teaches empathy by encouraging readers to consider the world from different perspectives. This aspect of literature is explored when the Bandit Book Club reads Erich Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front. As a German veteran of World War I, Remarque describes the experience of German soldiers during that war, but because the Germans are now occupying Warsaw, Zofia struggles to empathize with the book’s protagonist. Although she initially refuses to consider any empathy for a German soldier who, as she puts it, could now be “an officer here in Poland, forcing Jews from their jobs or executing Poles in the streets” (137), Zofia eventually comes to see the value and beauty in understanding any human perspective. She can see aspects of her father in the German protagonist and even returns to read the book again at the end of the novel. In this significant instance, Martin stresses that the power of the written word can encourage empathy even for Zofia’s enemies, and the theme is also explored in Chapter 7 when the book club conversation about Franz Kafka’s absurdist novel Metamorphosis leads Zofia to increased empathy and appreciation for her mother.