How do you define 'Holocaust literature'? The idea itself seems absurd, if not obscene; but the efforts of writers and philosophers to understand one of the most incomprehensible events in human history have produced mountains of books, some of them truly great, and it's an understandable instinct to lump them all together under a definable category. But categories are dangerous: some books are really about things they never explicitly mention, and some pretend to be about things that they're not; sometimes subsequent events give a book meanings it was never intended to have when it was written.

With that in mind, here are five books, some well-known and some less so (and not all of them obvious choices), that concern or reflect upon or bear some meaningful relation to the Holocaust. Not all of them would sit comfortably on a shelf marked 'Holocaust Literature', and this is by no means a 'best-of' list; instead, we hope these books might open up new perspectives or introduce you to writers you hadn't yet encountered.