Industry Reviews
'Written in Zable's lyrical style, The Fighter reads like a novel. The text provides many aesthetic pleasures; it also has heart and soul. This is an excellent addition to the literature on the survivors of war, focussing on the grief their families inherit.' * Books + Publishing *
`Zable's portrait of this amazing and compassionate man is an interesting and uplifting read.' * BookMooch *
'Arnold Zable performs his own masterclass in literary shadowboxing in The Fighter...[He] has a superb eye for detail and it serves the narrative exceptionally well...Zable channels the story of an ordinary man, a good man, who, to this day, is still winning on points.' * Saturday Paper *
'[Zable] takes the art of the novel - the attention to tone, rhythm and perspective - and applies it to the true story of Nissen...This book is about more [than boxing]: endeavor, belonging and redemption. It's the kind of story that made Bryce Courtenay's The Power of One a bestseller...It's also about Melbourne, its light and shade, and the people who fall between the cracks and the ones who survive.' * Herald Sun *
'A poignant tale of fortitude, love and sorrow...Arnold Zable draws an evocative portrait of post-war Carlton, underpinning his story of the compassionate man and the forces that moulded him.' * Chronicle *
'A truly inspiring slice-of-life tale...[Zable] skilfully peels back the layers of Henry's troubled mum Sonia and the effect it has had on the family.' * Adelaide Advertiser *
'Nissen is an unlikely hero, and Zable recreates his world with the utmost respect... [It] is an open-ended kind of book, a celebration more than a closed biography...The Fighter is an autumnal book, with leaves of many colours and limbs heavy with fruit. It offers a rich sense of the ways in which pain can mellow and create community.' * Australian Book Review *
`A study of loss, memory and displacement embodied in the lives of the previous generation, the refugees from Nazism and the war in Europe...During his career as a writer Zable has returned to this subject again and again, but there is nothing stale about the way he probes beneath the historical narrative of wartime Europe for the telling personal details that give meaning to individual lives...In Zable's sensitive hands, each individual story of survival belongs to all.' * Australian *
`Zable is a humane writer who invariably adopts a compassionate view of his subjects. He seeks to ennoble lives that might otherwise remain unheralded. His work recognises the basic decency of ordinary people and honours their struggles in the face of adversity.' * Age *
The Fighter does not merely echo the slang of Melbourne's once mean, working-class streets or the cries and clangs of its equally mean docks, but it also utterly inhabits its protagonist's voice and perspective. This book is an intriguing, compelling, moving and lyrical hybrid between memoir and fiction, just like the many lives of its subject, Henry Nissen. Boxer, dock worker, social worker, son, brother, husband and father, Jew and Australian, Nissen's life story is, literally, stranger than fiction-and more heart-breaking and inspiring than any novel could ever imagine. Zable unflinchingly tells Nissen's inspiring and affecting story. In vivid, evocative prose he celebrates not only Nissen's many unprecedented achievements in the boxing ring and his tireless, selfless work with Melbourne's most desperate, but also the achievements of his family, friends, and community. Skilfully juxtaposing the intersections between boxing, fighting and survival, good luck and bad, sanity and madness, this sensitively written book is ultimately a paean of hope and dignity, generosity and optimism, courage and love. * NSW Premier's Literary Awards, Judges' Comments *
