Nearly 90 years after its original publication, this ahead-of-its-time novel by one of the best-known Yiddish writers of his...
Bergelson's politically charged novel, first published in Yiddish in 1929, reflects on the dark absurdities of life along the Ukraine-Poland border circa 1920.
Set at the height of the Russian civil war, the book features an outsize cast of characters, Jewish and non-Jewish, struggling for survival as the Bolsheviks consolidate power. It's a time and place where everything is up for grabs—allegiances, ethnic identities, basic values—and madness reigns. Inhabitants of the (fictional) shtetl of Golikhovke survive by smuggling goods—as well as people and anti-Bolshevik propaganda—across the border. A seductive schemer known only as "the blonde" who considers herself a "devout Christian" will sleep with anyone—even let her body be "defiled by a dirty Jew"—to facilitate her trips back and forth. In a former monastery outside of town, people are interrogated and locked up at the whim of Filipov, an enigmatic, ailing enforcer for the Bolshevik secret police. For all the horrific truths at its foundations, this boldly modernist novel entertains with its bleak, coolly ironic humor. Among the memorable bit players are Bunem the Red and Hatskel Shpak, coachmen who take advantage of smugglers desperate to get out of town: "Jews fleecing Jews!" The initial chapters of Bergelson's book were published on the heels of Kafka's The Trial, to which it has fascinating ties.
Nearly 90 years after its original publication, this ahead-of-its-time novel by one of the best-known Yiddish writers of his era proves powerfully relevant in its first English translation.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-8101-3591-8
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Northwestern Univ.
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.
A lonely postman learns that he’s about to die—and reflects on life as he bargains with a Hawaiian-shirt–wearing devil.
The 30-year-old first-person narrator in filmmaker/novelist Kawamura’s slim novel is, by his own admission, “boring…a monotone guy,” so unimaginative that, when he learns he has a brain tumor, the bucket list he writes down is dull enough that “even the cat looked disgusted with me.” Luckily—or maybe not—a friendly devil, dubbed Aloha, pops onto the scene, and he’s willing to make a deal: an extra day of life in exchange for being allowed to remove something pleasant from the world. The first thing excised is phones, which goes well enough. (The narrator is pleasantly surprised to find that “people seemed to have no problem finding something to fill up their free time.”) But deals with the devil do have a way of getting complicated. This leads to shallow musings (“Sometimes, when you rewatch a film after not having seen it for a long time, it makes a totally different impression on you than it did the first time you saw it. Of course, the movie hasn’t changed; it’s you who’s changed") written in prose so awkward, it’s possibly satire (“Tears dripped down onto the letter like warm, salty drops of rain”). Even the postman’s beloved cat, who gains the power of speech, ends up being prim and annoying. The narrator ponders feelings about a lost love, his late mother, and his estranged father in a way that some readers might find moving at times. But for many, whatever made this book a bestseller in Japan is going to be lost in translation.
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.Pub Date: March 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-29405-0
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942
ISBN: 0060652934
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943
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