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THE ELIXIR OF IMMORTALITY

Name: THE ELIXIR OF IMMORTALITY
Author: Gabi Gleichmann
ISBN: 978-1-59051-589-1

by Gabi Gleichmann ; translated by Michael Meigs ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 2013

Full of wit and mystery. Memorable and sure to be one of the big novels of the season.

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A charged philosophical novel that ranges across centuries to examine where things went wrong (and sometimes right) in history for the Jews, from the heyday of Moorish Iberia to the collapse of the Berlin Wall.

“Our family originated in a mystery and a miracle before almost any of the European nations were created, and we’ve played a significant role in history without feeling arrogant about the secret knowledge...that we bore with us through various ages and lands.” Our narrator relates a millennium’s worth of tales surrounding that “secret knowledge,” namely the means to stay alive forever. Other alchemical talents include potions of various sorts, including one to fend off treason, another concoction that would find favor in the courts of Europe, where some member of the Spinoza family or another, Zelig-like, is always present. (The omnipresence of figures such as “the Cabalist” has a sharp point.) A best-seller in its birthplace of Norway, publisher and literary critic Gleichmann’s novel opens with a dying mother’s plaintive remembrance of a blameless young boy’s death at the hands of the Nazi occupiers of Oslo; it closes with an evocation of that sad young man, raised in the voice of our narrator, who is threatened with the very loss of that voice. He, like all in his lineage, has a gift of “embellishing the ugly and making the fleeting moment eternal.” But can that gift save them? Can they spin the gold of immortality for themselves as well? In a sprawling saga that embraces the likes of the storied kings of Castile and the philosopher Voltaire, Gleichmann has obvious good fun in exploring the implications, as well as the Big Questions, chief among them, “how God could allow such a thing.”

Full of wit and mystery. Memorable and sure to be one of the big novels of the season.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2013

ISBN: 978-1-59051-589-1

Page Count: 800

Publisher: Other Press

Review Posted Online: July 6, 2013

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2013

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION | RELIGIOUS FICTION

- PROFILES
In One Novel, the Vast History of an Entire People

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ANIMAL FARM

A FAIRY STORY

by George Orwell ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 26, 1946

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A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.

Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946

ISBN: 0452277507

Page Count: 114

Publisher: Harcourt, Brace

Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
GEORGE ORWELL
by George Orwell ; edited by Peter Davison

- BOOK REVIEW
DIARIES
by George Orwell & edited by Peter Davison

- BOOK REVIEW
ALL ART IS PROPAGANDA
by George Orwell

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THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS

by C.S. Lewis ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1942

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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.