by H.G. Adler ; translated by Peter Filkins ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 2, 2014
An eloquent record of suffering—and perhaps of redemption as well.
Pensive portrait of a man struggling to find a place in the world after enduring transformative calamity.
“To write poetry after Auschwitz,” wrote the German literary critic Theodore Adorno, “is barbaric.” But what of those who lived through Auschwitz? Just to live, to say nothing of writing, is problematic. So thinks the protagonist of survivor Adler’s novel, the last in a trilogy, the preceding two volumes of which were published out of order a half-century ago. There is the sheer guilt of being alive when so many died, and then there are the memories, the past that “hisses in my ears, causes horrible and sometimes also multiple sensations, pressing into me, lifting me, holding ready a thousand horrors….” Arthur Landau has lived. At the beginning of the 1960s, he's living in London, beginning to trust his neighbors a little, even though he and his family are the definitive strangers: “[T]he few people who know something about us are no less than an hour away.” The welcome trade-off, Landau says, is that no one bothers him, though the thought is always with him that he could just as easily disappear from the street with no one noticing or caring, as before. Landau’s world is one of memories that sometimes become very real—if only in his mind, though it’s not always easy for him or for readers to distinguish the real from the imagined, as with his Dostoyevski-an encounter with an “Assessor of Sympathies.” Landau’s disconnection is more affecting, and more open to the reader’s sympathy, than that of the protagonist of Elias Canetti’s Auto-da-Fé, which has a similarly strident quality; Adler’s novel has a Kafkaesque dimension as well, save that Landau has at least the saving grace of an understanding wife who does what she can to make him feel safe, or at least safer, in the world: “She was happy to see,” Landau tells us, “that I had achieved a partial and tolerable sense of resignation.”
An eloquent record of suffering—and perhaps of redemption as well.Pub Date: Dec. 2, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9306-6
Page Count: 672
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2014
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by H.G. Adler & translated by Peter Filkins
by C.S. Lewis ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1942
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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by C.S. Lewis
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by C.S. Lewis
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by C.S. Lewis
by Chaim Potok ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 28, 1967
This first novel, ostensibly about the friendship between two boys, Reuven and Danny, from the time when they are fourteen on opposing yeshiva ball clubs, is actually a gently didactic differentiation between two aspects of the Jewish faith, the Hasidic and the Orthodox. Primarily the Hasidic, the little known mystics with their beards, earlocks and stringently reclusive way of life. According to Reuven's father who is a Zionist, an activist, they are fanatics; according to Danny's, other Jews are apostates and Zionists "goyim." The schisms here are reflected through discussions, between fathers and sons, and through the separation imposed on the two boys for two years which still does not affect their lasting friendship or enduring hopes: Danny goes on to become a psychiatrist refusing his inherited position of "tzaddik"; Reuven a rabbi.... The explanation, in fact exegesis, of Jewish culture and learning, of the special dedication of the Hasidic with its emphasis on mind and soul, is done in sufficiently facile form to engage one's interest and sentiment. The publishers however see a much wider audience for The Chosen. If they "rub their tzitzis for good luck,"—perhaps—although we doubt it.
Pub Date: April 28, 1967
ISBN: 0449911543
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: April 6, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1967
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by Chaim Potok
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by Chaim Potok
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