Need a Short Story's Title!

May 16, 2007 2:37 PM

Can someone help me remember the author and/or title of this short story: An inmate in a concentration camp has to pretend to speak Persian so the commander (who wants to learn how to speak Persian) will keep him alive. I seem to remember that at one point, a real Persian shows up, which threatens to unravel the inmate's plans, so he arranges to have the Persian killed. Does this ring a bell?
posted by John of Michigan to writing & language (6 comments total)

There's a story in P R Reid's The Latter Days at Colditz (pp241-3)--about a prisoner, Cyril Lewthwaite who agreed to teach Chinese to a fellow prisoner, a Polish barrister, in exchange for learning French. He spoke no Chinese but, undaunted, concocted an ersatz language based on Latin declensions.

You may be thinking of this.
posted by Hogshead at 4:52 PM on May 16, 2007

I seem to remember a graphic novel, or a short piece, anyway, about something very much like this. I no longer have it on hand, but I think it was in the '05 or '06 edition of Best Non-Required Reading or possible McSweeney's 13.
posted by GilloD at 5:48 PM on May 16, 2007

On the graphic novel front, in Maus II a Polish Jew teaches a guard English in exchange for being kept safe, but he actually knows English fairly well and isn't faking. It's almost certainly not what John of MI is looking for, but it might be what Gillod is thinking of.
posted by Wingy at 6:09 PM on May 16, 2007

If you still can't figure this out by tomorrow, I'll check the reference tools we use for questions like this. (I work http://www.ushmm.org/research/library/, btw.) Are you absolutely sure of the details (specifically the Persian part)? And you say "concentration camp," but to be completely clear: are you referring to a Nazi camp? Or is it just a prison (or gulag) of some sort?
posted by arco at 7:08 PM on May 16, 2007

Dammit, screwed up that link, sorry. That was supposed to look like this: here.
posted by arco at 7:09 PM on May 16, 2007

I'm going to throw this out though I have no real reason to believe it's the answer - could it be from Papillon (the book, not the movie)? I read the book a year or so back and when I saw this question that's the first thing that popped into my head, though I don't remember it specifically nor do I have a copy of the book anymore to consult.
posted by marylynn at 10:55 AM on May 17, 2007