Murder. Means nothing to the ear. In English it could even be glamorous … Murder. And there are worse substitutes for feeling: Passed Away; Just Reward; A Long Illness. And the most inadequate word of them all: Holocaust. A nothing category; a eunuch of a word. A Jewish term, anyway. To them it has significance. To the rest of this numb world …                                          —Stefan Kanfer, The Eighth Sin   Human tragedy has always given rise to great novels; which is not to say that only novels with a tragic theme qualify for greatness or that tragedy can be justified…