Ozick, Cynthia

Average customer rating:

Of Fathers and Sons
A Day in the Life
Review of seize the Day
Powerful and bleak
The world don' t believe in tears!

Seize the Day (Penguin Classics)
Saul Bellow
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0142437611
Release Date: 2003-05-27

Book Description

GBF Discussion; Guide online

Introduction by Cynthia Ozick.

Customer Reviews:

Of Fathers and Sons.......2007-06-07

I recently finished reading Martin Amis's EXPERIENCE: A MEMOIR in which he cites Saul Bellow as a literary father figure (moreso, it seems, than his own author father Kingsley Amis). This made me want to read something by Bellow and since SEIZE THE DAY is a short novel (114 pages) from his peak period I chose to read this book first. Cynthia Ozick's introductory essay was not a very helpful introduction to the book. She quotes heavily from the novel, which is a bit of a spoiler. Perhaps it would have been better to read her essay after reading the novel.

First published in 1956, the novel is about a middle-aged man in New York City who is separated from his wife (and sons) and living in a residential hotel, the Gloriana, the same hotel where his father keeps a separate apartment. I appreciated this book as a portrait of a middle-aged, middle class white male in mid-twentieth century America. One feels both sympathy for and frustration with the main character, Tommy Wilhelm. He's intelligent and well-meaning, but also weak and easily swayed by others' opinion of him and what he needs to do to become a "success." A failed Hollywood actor, he seems startled to learn, like Willie Loman, that personal attractiveness is not always enough to ensure success. His disappointment in himself is echoed by his own father, Dr. Adler, who is unwilling to give him words of encouragement (or the much-needed financial aid his son seeks). But his birth father is not the only father figure in his life to betray or disappoint him. There was also Maurice Venice, the sleazy agent who encouraged Wilhelm to drop out of college to pursue a career in pictures. And then, in the present day of the story (the entire novel unfolds in a single day like the much longer ULYSSES) there is Dr. Tamkin, a dubiously credentialed psychiatrist, who lures Wilhelm to invest in lard in the Chicago commodities market, precipitating the primary crisis of the novel. Against this tortured backdrop is the story of Wilhelm's own efforts to remain a visible and active part in his own sons' lives while trying to initiate a divorce from their mother. While some readers may perceive the depiction of the "blood-sucking" Margaret as misogynistic, Bellow's depiction of this failed relationship seems authentic, especially for the era he was writing about. Fathers' rights were few and women, even separated and divorced women, were expected to stay at home and take care of their children. And in the end, SEIZE THE DAY is a novel without either untarnished heroes or blameless victims. Even disappointing father figures can speak profound truths, as Dr. Tamkin does when he tells Wilhelm, "Don't marry suffering. Some people do. They get married to it, and sleep and eat together, just as husband and wife. If they go with joy they think it's adultery." In SEIZE THE DAY Bellow has given us a powerful meditation on what it means to pursue the soul's deepest desires and to mourn the many deaths and losses even the most optimistic among us is bound to encounter living out the life they've been given.

A Day in the Life.......2007-05-12

I found this book immensely satisfying in its form and its substance. Yet I felt quite relieved to finish it. The main character Wilhelm's feeling of oppression and despair was so contagious that like him, I as the reader felt that I was searching for relief. And all in the space of one day - or in fact, less than a day. A day in the life.
As the story progresses, it does not progress. It stands still, and Wilhelm is still trapped in his search for the simple, the beautiful. That is, until the last page, when he sinks into "the happy oblivion of tears." The readers, feels like clapping and cheering with every tear he sheds.
This is a man's world, where people "make a killing" in the growing complexities of 1950s New York. Even old men are caught in the obsession of making money. One gets the feeling there is no space for women here.
Although the hypnotic Dr Tamkin holds sway over Wilhelm, his main conflict is with his father - depicted as a vain, cold old man. Wilhelm suffers from that coldness. He is trying to find the warmth.
Bellow seems able to sum up a character in one paragraph. Also, in a Dickensian way, the appearance of the character IS the character.
This is a complete gem of a novel. We are taken through an important day in the life of Wilhelm, in the intensity of New York on the edge of the modern world, vividly depicted. It is a book you will want to dip back into time and again, for its beautiful pearls of language and emotion.

Review of seize the Day.......2007-03-09

The book was pretty goo, never would have read it if i didn't need it for my English class

Powerful and bleak.......2007-02-05

The American Dream is such an awesome, vast, teeming notion that promises so much and forgets those who are broken on its huge wheel. Tommy Wilhelm is one such man, a salesman in mid life who has lost his job, left his family and now festers in limbo, worrying, fretting with his burden in a hotel room. Everywhere he turns, he is scorned. By the mysterious Tamkin, a wild and shifty charismatic character who insists a fortune can be made easily be made by closely watching certain patterns: 'You think the Wall Street guys are so smart - geniuses? That's because most of us are psychologically afraid to think about the details.' He is, of course, a conman, who deceives Wilhelm out of the last of his money, but Wilhelm is too gullible to see this.

Then there is his father, Dr Adler - a proud, dying, stern man who treats his son with wretched contempt when he is forced to ask for money, unfeelingly, his father emasculates Tommy's condition in phrases that cut deep in their scathing: 'You cry about being helped,' he said. 'When you thought you had to go into the service I sent a check to Margret every month. As a family man you could have had an exemption. But no? The war couldn't be fought without you and you had to get yourself drafted and be an office boy in the Pacific theater. Any clerk could have done what you did. You could find nothing better to become than a GI.' Ouch.

All of this combines in a memorable scene towards the end of the novella, after Tommy has been humiliated by his ex wife, who holds him to his payments towards their children which he cannot afford and his father, boling with rage, rejects him entirely: 'Go away from me now. It's torture for me to look at you, you slob!'. Tommy goes out into the street: 'And the great, great crowd, the inexhaustible current of millions of every race and kind pouring out, pressing round, of ever age, of every genius, possessors of every human secret, antique and future, in every face the refinement of one particular motive or essence - I labor, I spend, I strive, I design, I love, I cling, I uphold, I give way, I envy, I long, I scorn, I die, I hide, I want.'

Despite all the circumstances, the slings and arrows Tommy has suffered, he retains the essential human essence, the grappling with existence that Bellow stared into deeply in his work. There is something of the defiance, the glorifying human passage of Augie March, that remains, even in the most desperate, desperate circumstances.

The world don' t believe in tears!.......2006-06-03

Saul Bellow was one of the most prominent, sharp and intelligent exponents of the American literature.

Carpe Diem constitutes a somber portrait around a looser, a man who systematically is incapable to win in any order of his life. Emotionally destroyed, spiritually demolished, financially bluffed, this man has been victim of the rest of the world in all orders. That oppressive anguish of visible creative impotence, product of a total absence of will, has transformed him into a true puppet.

This corrosive gaze still expands far beyond his inner demons and all the environment around him is the extension of his passiveness. A candid looser, a tricked man by his wife, is object of mockery for the rest of his social circle.

This novel was one the most bitter and crude works in the Fifties. It reflects the existential uncertainness of a weak spirited human being, immersed in world that simply does not understand him and besides incapable to feel and to cry with him.

An agonic portrait of a man worthy of the most genuine compassion, and also the a bitter metaphor around a man without emotional center.

Stunning and devastating.

Average customer rating:

A disturbing and moving work
beautiful
jam packed with excitment
Living On Death
soul of the holocaust

The Shawl
Cynthia Ozick
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0679729267
Release Date: 1990-08-29

Book Description

A devastating vision of the Holocaust and the unfillable emptiness it left in the lives of those who passed through it.

Customer Reviews:

A disturbing and moving work .......2007-02-06

This short work telling of the death of a child in the Shoah, and the subsequent life- destroying effect on the mother of the child is a disturbing and moving one. The symbolic 'shawl' connects the two parts of the work. It had helped keep baby Magda alive in a concentration camp, , and fifty years later the Mother Rosa holds on to as if it contained within it the life of her dead baby. Ozick's writing is brilliant especially in her depiction of the aging survivors in Miami. A note of hope enters in the figure of an elderly suitor Persky who attempts to woo Rosa back to a life of her own. But as Ozick makes painfully clear the message of Rosa's life is that what has been most loved in the past is far more real than any present or future can be.

beautiful.......2006-04-25

Is there a better writer out there? I cannot imagine one. Ozick is a powerful writer -- a magician, in the truest sense of the word. This short book is actually two long stories that originally appeared in the New Yorker. Both segments contain mostly the same people, but at 40 years distance. In the first part, Stella and Rosa, along with Rosa's baby, are force marched and then imprisoned as Jews by the [...]. Through a sort of fantasy, the baby is kept alive for a period of time through the use of the shawl mentioned in the title. 40 years later, Rosa is spiritually still in the camp, though she lives in Miami Beach. When asked about her life, she says it was stolen from her. I won't say anything else except to say that this is so affecting that you won't be able to read it unmoved. I highly recommend this book.

jam packed with excitment.......2005-04-19

"The Shawl" was an exciting adventure that brought me from Rosa's young/middle ages to her elder ages. It brought me through a various range of emotions very quickly. Once you start the book it will be hard for you to put it down. It's a nice brief book jam packed with excitement. Since it is a brief book the level of excitement stays at that same level it starts out as.

Rosa Lublin, the main character has a very hard time in the beginning of the book when she sees her baby daughter, Magda, get killed. That was the hardest thing she has to deal with while being in the Nazi Holocaust. After her hard ships she winds up settling down in Florida. She's a loner, only because she can't let go of her past. But eventually finds her way back to reality after a little help. The author, Cynthia Ozick, has a way of blending everything, emotions, objects, thoughts, hallucinations, ect, into the fast pace book.

I strongly recommend this book to people who can keep up with its fast pace adventure, and who are interested in concentration camps. However if you are a person who wants a real cheerful book this one isn't for you.

Living On Death.......2005-03-12

In Ozick's book she presents a truly phenomenal treatise on the life of a retired holocaust survivor. Ozick paints an incredible graphic picture of what Miami looks like to one who has survived a stint in a Nazi concentration camp. The story starts with a classic example of Nazi savagery, showing how the protagonist had a daughter in the camp, and how that daughter was treated with gratuitous violence and horror.

Ozick clearly portrays a women with a mind that has been tortured so badly, that she feels that everything is deeply negative. The vision is of one whose eyes have been colored with blood colored glasses, and the dust and ash of burnt bodies. The story leads the reader through this emotional and psychic horror show, that runs through the protagonist's head.

For a bit of additional irony, Ozick reveals the story as her character searches the city for a lost pair of underwear. This personal item is so important to her, that she exerts more energy in the search for that, than she does in the continuation of life. Her perspective is that the Nazi's "stole her life." And for so many, this was indeed the case. Whether they survived or not, they had their lives stolen from them.

Through this prism Ozick reveals the way the mind is deeply and permanently affected by the exposure to a period of horror; that no human being should ever have to endure. As a result, the experience always leaves an impression on the mind which cannot be shirked, no matter how hard a survivor tries, the memory of the ugliness and the near death conditions never completely leaves their memory or present day life.

The book is highly recommended for those interested in the affect that being in a concentration camp exerts on the human mind. It also is a purely exquisite tale of human suffering.

soul of the holocaust.......2003-08-25

I believe the holocast a nightmare - an ugly beast. if Weisel's book " night" be the fictional body of that beast then Shawl is the fictional soul of that beast. This is not first hand description of holocast so it is less bloody but still touching. I liked it for it's literary values and not for it's historical value. even concntration camp kills human beings but does not kill the social barriers that are build inside us from childhood. that idea kind of defeats me. I like the central Character rosa - reminded me of another great novel from Maim Gorky called the "mother"

Seize the Day (Penguin Twentieth Century Classics)

Average customer rating:

Brilliant Jewish anti hero in a cannibalistic financial world
Williams the actor
Very good
Pathetic Tendency Made Funny
And then he snapped

Seize the Day (Penguin Twentieth Century Classics)
Saul Bellow
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0140189378

Customer Reviews:

Brilliant Jewish anti hero in a cannibalistic financial world.......2007-03-20

An interesting film adapted from Saul Bellow, the famous Nobel Prize winner. Here the character, a middle-age Jewish man, is accumulating all kinds of difficulties: he is fired, he is separated from his wife who hassles him for money, he is rejected financially and emotionally by his own father, he is fooled by a fake finance wizard who practically robs him of his money, and I should say etc and so on. The character is perfectly hysterical in an absolutely paranoid direction and we can see him going down little by little and it all ends up on a total dead end blind alley impasse. In other words a perfect loser in the Jewish culture who ends up crying on his own fate in the funeral of some other guy he does not know at all among people who don't know him nor he them. That is pure Saul Bellow who dedicated his whole writing career to such losers and total misfits in the world of making money not only to survive, not even to live, but to exist. In other words he is self immolating himself at the social stake of financial failure. Brilliant.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine & University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne

Williams the actor.......2007-01-12

I know it sounds sacreligious, but I've never thought Robin Williams was funny and the harder he tries to be funny the more unfunny I find him. I was really impressed therefore, the first time I saw him in a dramatic performance a few years ago and it was Seize the Day. I had no idea that he had such talent. He communicates everything that there is to be felt in the story by the strength of his performance.

Very good.......2006-11-19

This thin novel is a joy to read because it is a bright study of a man who is vaguely tortured by his own circumstances of the "now." The past haunts him. The future terrifies him. There is no wiggle room for this sorry fellow because the whole of the book takes place in one day's time. I could not help but see it as an ingenious story that dwelled insistently on the strength of palpable context and bare emotion.

Pathetic Tendency Made Funny.......2006-06-03

A middle-aged man at his wit's end; his past, present, and future seem bleak. Mr. Bellow wrote with ease and humor about such a man. Although the character is in his forties and has barely jumped over one hurdle after another throughout his whole life due to his own naivety, he continues to make more mistakes than ever. The story takes place only in one day. In about 115 pages the reader finds out what makes the man he is. It is also up to the reader to conclude Mr. Bellow's account of this man. Mr. Bellow's writing was fluent where he detailed each appearance and action thoroughly with a very good sense of humor. It is a fast and interesting read.

And then he snapped.......2005-03-13

Very faithful adaptation of Saul Bellow's novel, with Robin Williams in the lead role as Tommy Wilhelm, a 40-year-old man down and out on his luck and howling at the world because of it. Williams lets out all the stops and creates a harrowing and harried character who loses all hope. A powerful picture.

Average customer rating:

Babel is not for everyone
After Chekhov comes Babel
HAS TO BE READ BY EVERYONE !!!!!!!!!
Short Story Master Stakes Claim to History
Fascinating Book

The Collected Stories of Isaac Babel
Isaac Babel
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Company
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Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0393324028

Book Description

Following the historic publication of Norton's The Complete Works of Isaac Babel in the fall of 2001, The Collected Stories of Isaac Babel appears as the most authoritative and complete edition of his fiction ever published in paperback. Babel was best known for his mastery of the short story form—in which he ranks alongside Kafka and Hemingway—but his career was tragically cut short when he was murdered by Stalin's secret police. Edited by his daughter Nathalie Babel and translated by award-winner Peter Constantine, this paperback edition includes the stunning Red Cavalry Stories; The Odessa Tales, featuring the legendary gangster Benya Krik; and the tragic later stories, including "Guy de Maupassant." This will be the standard edition of Babel's stories for years to come.

Customer Reviews:

Babel is not for everyone.......2006-08-20

Reviewers on Amazon tend to self-select; I've noticed that people (including myself) seem more willing to write reviews of books they loved than of books they disliked. This makes sense; I usually don't even finish reading a book I strongly dislike.

But I had to read this book for a class. It was possibly my least favorite work of literature that I have ever read. Babel's writing is sparse, dry, and frequently cryptic; often I struggled to figure out what was actually going on in the stories. I also found his characters opaque and mysterious, and not in a good way. And all his stories are gloomy, and apt to induce misery in an unsuspecting reader. Babel's writing is rich with layers of meaning, but its about as enjoyable to crack as a caluculus textbook. The difficulty I encountered in reading this book just made Russia seem insurmountably foreign to me. Instead of serving as a bridge to another culture, this book aroused a feeling of alienation in me.

I will not be so presumptuous as to say that Babel is a bad writer. But I must attest that Babel is not for everyone. On my scale--1 star.

After Chekhov comes Babel.......2005-11-11

How late I learned the essential things in life! In my childhood, nailed to the Gemara, I led the life of a sage, and it was only later, when I was older, that I began to climb trees"
So we have the image of Babel the pale scholarly youth with 'spectacles on his nose and autumn in his heart" He after Chekhov is the great Russian short story writer.
Babel's greatness as a short-story is related to his realistic precision, and observational power. He sees often it seems into the heart of his characters with an objective and penetrating eye. He portrays soul- wrenching scenes of great violence, deprivation with a kind of detached objectivity. His stories like those of Chekhov perhaps like those of Russian writers especially often involve incidents of great cruelty.
It is interesting that the opening story tells of an eighty-six year old old-time Jew who living with his son and daughter- in law.The son is about to adopt the new faith of the Revolution.The old man realizing that he will have no place in the new order hangs himself- an act which Babel portrays as an act of courage and faith in God. And this while it seems to me showing a certain regrettable contempt for the Torah world to which the old man is bound.
Babel's early stories , the childhood tales of which the most famous is 'On a Dovecote'already have his characteristic realistic precision. The stories which make him most known , "The Red Cavalry " stories in which he tells of the Cossacks he rode with are another important part of the oeuvre.Here there is felt especially the great division in Babel between the world of power and physical force, and a kind sensitive inner life.Then there are the Odessa stories of Benya Krik, the world of Jewish gangsters, and of a colorful and yet cruel life once again precisely observed.
The tale of Babel's later years when under the shadow and threat of Stalin he spoke of himself writing 'in the genre of silence', and of his being murdered is the tale of a great writer cut down too soon.
We don't have all the stories we might have from this great master. But what we do have are the axe which breaks through the icy soul within.

HAS TO BE READ BY EVERYONE !!!!!!!!!.......2005-08-03

There is little more I can say about this astonishing piece of work that has not already been said, but I will add my piece in the hope that it will encourage more people to read what is a genuinely important piece of writing.
Buy this book to appreciate Babel's portrayal of real and raw emotion, his comprehensive understanding of human character, his sparse, tight writing style that is both painfully lucid and beautifully poetic.

The one new thing I think has to be said is a defence of the picture on the front. What has to be understood is why this picture is there and why it looks the way it does; The cheek and mouth are sticking out that way for a very good reason! My only advice is to say if you do not know the full story don't comment on it. In any case, this is a wonderful, life-changing book that needs to be read by everyone.

Short Story Master Stakes Claim to History.......2005-02-12

Reading Babel is no picnic in the park. His words are often hard to understand, let alone relish. In Red Cavalry, as he evokes heartrending scenes of torture, deprivation, and corruption, it is often hard to read without almost begging the author for a point of view, a call to arms. Yet in his sharp, vivid--yet terse, accounts (somewhat naturalistic as characters succumb to the hideous corollaries of civil stife--hunger, unbridled violence, senseless cruelty, inhumanity) his compact, frugal stories are never sentetious or tendetious.

The Odessa Tales, the second part of his ouevre, is nearer and dearer to my heart. Immediately, I fell in love with a rabbi's narration of mythical gangster hero Benya Krik. Benya, a Jewish thug with a code of values, who no doubt has the power to empower the young minds of Jewish boys, commands respect as a charismatic desperado, so alien to the preconceptions of Jews as victims and middle-class pushovers, always dependent on the mercy of the ruling elite. Benya wends his way around authorities--whether monarchist or Bolshevik, not only marching to the beat of a different drum, but subjugating others to the beat. Scenes of Odessa, my hometown, are sumptuous though sparing in descriptions of wealthy and lowly merchants, sailors, criminals, and lackeys.

Having read these and other stories in Russian, I look forward to reading the translation in hopes of better understanding them in my adopted tongue. Babel is not the most facile read, but an important and long ignored voice in the Soviet literary canon. Enjoy.

Fascinating Book.......2001-04-27

A superbly written insider's look at the Russian revolution. Babel can convey the horrors of war with very few words. I enjoyed the best his sarcastic treatement of the bombastic communist rhetoric in such stories as "Salt" and "Treason" (maybe because I was exposed to it myself at one time).

The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg and Other Stories and Essays (1900) (Oxford Mark Twain)

Average customer rating:

A bit confusing but. . .

The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg and Other Stories and Essays (1900) (Oxford Mark Twain)
Mark Twain , and Jeffrey Rubin-Dorsky
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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The American Claimant

ASIN: 0195101502

Book Description

This collection of 15 pieces by Mark Twain displays, as Cynthia Ozick writes in her introduction, "the entire arsenal of his art: the occasionally reckless polemic, the derisive irony, the intelligent laughter, the verbal stilettos, the blunt country humor, the fervent despair, the hidden jeer, the relishing of palaver and tall tale, the impatient worldliness, and the brilliant forays of language." "The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg," a dark and riveting dissection of a town's hypocrisy, vanity, and misplaced pride, is one of Twain's most ingenious and memorable stories. Whether anatomizing the dynamics of anti-Semitism in "Concerning the Jews" or "Stirring Times in Austria," or looking back on his personal literary odyssey in "My Debut as a Literary Person," Twain is lively and engaging. This volume also contains "My First Lie, and How I Got Out of It," a remarkable essay that begins lightly, but soon turns into a razor sharp attack on humanity's indifference to injustice.

Customer Reviews:

A bit confusing but. . ........2000-03-31

Well, not one of Mark Twain's finest, but The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg is a good book. It deals with the temptation and corruption that occurs in everyones life. A couple receives anonymous money and is forced by reputation to do the right thing. Whether they and the town do is another situation. Eventually the whole community becomes involved and the righteous owner of the money is to be determined. Although it is a little confusing, it makes the reader think just how much money is the greed of all evil.

Average customer rating:

Of Heirs and Orphans
Interesting Charactor Study
Strange characters. Great writer.
A total bore.
No Story

Heir to the Glimmering World
Cynthia Ozick
Manufacturer: Mariner Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0618618805

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Cynthia Ozick has been known for decades as one of America's most gifted and extraordinary storytellers; her remarkable new novel has established her as one of the most enticingly readable as well. Heir to the Glimmering World received exuberant reviews after its hardcover publication, and Ozick, on her first-ever book tour, was welcomed by standing-room-only crowds. Reading groups, too, have embraced the novel, which was selected by Ann Patchett for NBC's Today Show Book Club. Set in the New York of the 1930s, Heir to the Glimmering World is an entrancing, richly plotted novel brimming with intriguing characters. Orphaned at eighteen, with few possessions, Rose Meadows finds steady employment with the Mitwisser clan. Recently arrived from Berlin, the Mitwissers rely on the auspices of a generous benefactor, James A'Bair, the discontented heir to a fortune his father, a famous children's author, made from a series of books called The Bear Boy. Rose watches as the refugee family's fortunes rise and fall, against the vivid backdrop of a world in tumult. Ozick's novel is a thrilling read that will undoubtedly gain this lauded author new readers in paperback.

Customer Reviews:

Of Heirs and Orphans.......2007-03-22

Set in the late 1930s, Cynthia Ozick's newest novel is narrated by Rosie, a recently orphaned girl who has come to work as a live-in typist for Professor Mitwisser, an emigrant who fled Nazi Germany with his family for upstate New York and then the Bronx. Mitwisser studies an ancient sect called the Karaites who shun interpretation of the scripture as heresy, even as they write and analyze the fallibility of other religions' commentary on the bible. The family lives off of the generosity of James, an unstable patron and friend of the family who aids as well as disrupts them. Rosie shares a bedroom with the Professor's mentally unstable wife and also occasionally looks after the youngest of the five children. Throughout most of the novel she is alone in a house full of people. However, despite being treated coldly and solely as a "tool" she gains something from this family. In the most ecstatic passages in the novel Rosie describes her role as typist: "a motionless scene, I with my fingers stilled on the light-stippled glass of the typewriter keys, a twisted tail of hair sucked in at the side of my lip, he standing giantly over me, submerged in his dream of forgotten heresies." This beautifully written book raises the question of what can we inherit and from whom, even when "historyless" like this sensitive narrator.

Interesting Charactor Study.......2006-12-31

In this book,a young woman poetically named Rose Meadows goes to work for the Mitwissers,a family of German-Jewish refugees from 1930's Europe. As a typist for the eccentric scholar Mr. Mitwisser as well as helping to look after his now unstable wife, (who worked as a doctor of research in Berlin) and help with their large (5 children strong) family. At first Rose feels unsure of her status within this chaotic household,but she gradually develops a bond with the family,the father in particular. The are in dire straits as far as money is concerned as well and they eagerly await the arrival of mysterious benefactor, James A'Bear,(whose father used as a model for a series of childrens books about a "Bear Boy") Having met the family at a boarding house in upstate New York,he then takes them under his wing by getting them an apartment in the Bronx,so the father can be close to New York and continue his research of an obscure Jewish sect there. James is kind,generous,funny and an achoholic who feels resentment toward his father;therefore he spends his royalties freely on this family and lives a nomadic life-style which later involves the family's eldest daughter Anneliese,who falls hopelessly in love with him. This book, though subtly written,has strong,complex charactors. Even Rose,who is basic a reactionary charactor,has some "skeletons" of her own concerning her father,a compulsive gambler who dies tragically before she goes to work for the Mitwisser's. This also includes a "cousin" who joins the Commmunist party through his infatuatuion with a young woman who calls herself Ninel(Lenin spelt backwards). This book ,in spite of it's rather downbeat subject matter has a dry,ironic tone to it,as well as an unexpected upbeat ending of sorts.As a window into the depression-era as well as the plight of the refugee, this is a sharply written,involving book.

Strange characters. Great writer........2006-11-03

Rose, a smart young woman with little hope of opportunity, finds employment with a family of well-educated Jewish Germans, the Mittwissers, who have traveled to New York evading Nazi persecution. Mr. Mittwisser is harsh & obstinate, finding no scholarly interest for his research. The only time Mr. Mittwisser yields is in the presence of a massively famous children's book heir, James A'Bair, who intermittently showers the family with trivial gifts and funding for Mr. Mittwisser's research. Mrs. Mittwisser is driven to madness by their plight. Once a prominent German physicist and colleague of the famous German physicist Erwin Schrödinger, Mrs. Mittwisser believes she's entitled to his Nobel Prize. The Mittwisser children are arrogant and unruly despite the fact that they have nothing. James A' Bair never seems able to rise above his inheritance & unwanted fame. Rose, only needing a little money to begin her young life, keeps getting sidetracked by others' interference.

The story is mainly character driven, though the plot is sound. The real gem is the writer. Her deft character development makes one actually care what happens to these unnerving people. I can't say that I ever 'liked' them, but I did want to know what happened to them.

I'd recommend this book for those who enjoy historical fiction, Jewish interest, or well written models of character development.

A total bore........2006-07-19

I started out interested, but kept waiting for the story to go somewhere. I was totally bored and gave up at page 100. None of the ladies in my book club (we chose it for our monthly read) liked it. They all thought I made a wise decision, and wished they hadn't wasted time completing it. We questioned the San Francisco Chronicle's description of it as a "rollicking story". Chicago Sun-Times called it "funny and witty and engaging." Did we all read the same book????

No Story.......2006-05-06

The first fifty pages of this book are interesting and absorbing--a host of seemingly fascinating characters and situations are introduced, and the author has beautiful prose.
Unfortunately, this book has no plot, and failed to inspire any emotion whatsoever. It is a collection of miserable people who undergo no character development. Nothing happens, except that everyone is miserable. None of the characters are sympathetic--the reader cannot connect to them because they are pure creations of meaningless beautiful words, self-pity, and inexplicable neuroses. The narrator, eighteen year old Rose, fails to make an impression. She is so absolutely passive that she has no personality.
So I could not recommend "Heir to the Glimmering World". It is pretentious, plotless, and uninspiring.

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interesting...
Puttermesser for President
Oh to be smart
Death Is The Ultimate Truth
A Portrait of Desire

The Puttermesser Papers: A Novel
Cynthia Ozick
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0679777393
Release Date: 1998-06-30

Amazon.com

Fans of Cynthia Ozick are likely already familiar with Ruth Puttermesser, whose highly educated, unlucky-in-love but rather mystical existence as a Jewish woman in New York City has been chronicled in previously published stories appearing occasionally through the years. The Puttermesser Papers collects the old stories, along with several new ones, combined to create a funny and surreal picaresque narrative, touching upon Puttermesser's job at a blueblood law firm, her creation and intellectual sparring with the golem she makes out of soil from her flowerpots, her term as mayor of New York, her own death by murder, and beyond.

Book Description

With dashing originality and in prose that sings like an entire choir of sirens, Cynthia Ozick relates the life and times of her most compelling fictional creation. Ruth Puttermesser lives in New York City. Her learning is monumental. Her love life is minimal (she prefers pouring through Plato to romping with married Morris Rappoport). And her fantasies have a disconcerting tendency to come true - with disastrous consequences for what we laughably call "reality."

Puttermesser yearns for a daughter and promptly creates one, unassisted, in the form of the first recorded female golem. Laboring in the dusty crevices of the civil service, she dreams of reforming the city - and manages to get herself elected mayor. Puttermesser contemplates the afterlife and is hurtled into it headlong, only to discover that a paradise found is also paradise lost. Overflowing with ideas, lambent with wit, The Puttermesser Papers is a tour de force by one of our most visionary novelists.

"The finest achievement of Ozick's career... It has all the buoyant integrity of a Chagall painting." -San Francisco Chronicle
"Fanciful, poignant... so intelligent, so finely expressed that, like its main character, it remains endearing, edifying, a spark of light in the gloom." -The New York Times
"A crazy delight." -The New York Time Book Review

Customer Reviews:

interesting..........2007-01-04

This book came as a pleasant surprise! I had heard about the author (Cynthia Osick) and became curious. The book is very unusual and reports different episodes in the life a lawyer in New York, which are quite imaginative and fantastic. It is amusing as the main character seems to be a pathetic woman but slowly as the story progresses I came to feel that we all are pathetic too. I'm not sure that I got all the meaning of the author but it was fun and enjoyable.

Puttermesser for President.......2006-05-24

Cynthia Ozick has written another wonderful romp through a make-believe world that that reminds one of the verisimilitudes of insanity. THE PUTTERMESSER PAPERS will either draw you in so quickly the pages do not turn fast enough, or put you off immediately, in which case only a valiant effort will take you beyond page fifty. I was among the former group, and found the main character's ups and downs quite compelling. Who doesn't want to create their own personal muse/agent/protector out of potting soil? Golems... again, you either love them or... Ozick shows how love is often not easily recognized, and why, when we miss it, there are consequences.

And even if for only half a term, NYC could use a mayor like Puttermesser...

Oh to be smart.......2005-10-02

Is life really this frustrating for intelligent Jewish females in New York city? This novel (as is clearly enough noted in these reviews, really a collection of stories / novellas) describes various stages in the life and death of Ruth Puttermesser, who was brilliant in law school, but somehow never managed to turn that into a successful career, let alone a satisfying relationship. Meanwhile, the reader can sit back and watch as she briefly becomes mayor -- her downfall is as fast as her rise -- or gets married to a younger man whose whole purpose in doing so was to leave her.

For reading this book, it's good if you have a broad education, otherwise certain -- sometimes essential -- point might escape you. Still, Ozick's erudition is sometimes a bit much: as if she had swallowed an encyclopaedia. Also, her writing style relies a bit much on a particular trick: paragraphs start out with narratively relevant material, but then peter out in (oh so) witty observation. "Puttermesser had a younger sister who was also highly motivated, but she had married an Indian, a Parsee chemist, and gone to live in Calcutta. Already the sister had four children and seven saris of various fabrics." Cute, but after a couple of times it becomes a trick.

Death Is The Ultimate Truth.......2004-11-04

In Ozick's book, "The Puttermesser Papers" the reader encounters brilliance, insight and literary wisdom which is perhaps unsurpassed. The book presents the dilemma of a highly trained and highly intelligent and highly well read protagonist, who observes her life and presents her life philosophy, as it tangentially touches the rest of the world. Despite this life of mostly solitude and unhappiness there is the incisive uncovering of a universality of man/woman.

The book discusses the cycles of life, and afterlife, through the eyes of the protagonist, Puttermesser. Her life starts on a good footing; she makes certain decisions that are done mostly for ethical and aesthetic reasons. The changes make her happier, sometimes, and unhappy most of the time. Nonetheless, she perseveres. She stumbles through life's pitfalls and works them through, both professionally and personally. In fact, with a little help from some spiritual friends, she rises to exalted levels of power.

But, then the cycle changes. Those same friends that got her to high places, conspire to ruin this achievement, and in fact are successful at destroying it. She becomes a pariah in her own town, in her own neighborhood. And she sadly watches as all she has accomplished comes undone.

At the nadir of her life, she dies. And she does not just die, she is murdered. But that is not where the story ends. The story continues into Paradise, the Garden of Eden, Heaven, where she finds what she did not really expect. In Paradise, she finds that it is only necessary for one to 'think it so,' and it is so, in Paradise. But similarly to real life, all things must pass, and thus whatever one thinks into existence in Paradise, is also destined to disappear. And thus, Ozick reveals, that Paradise is not only Heaven, but also Hell simultaneously: A simulacrum of life.

And thus, Ozick leaves us with the age old question: Is it better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all? Or, as Ozick put it "Better never to have loved than loved at all. Better never to have risen than had a fall."

The book is recommended for all highly read people as the literary references are many. And the uses of them are brilliant. In addition, the book is recommended to anyone who is trying to answer the question of love, in terms of whether it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. The book provides spiritual, mundane and metaphysical thoughts on the cycle of life and afterlife, that provide highly provocative concepts to consider with regard to that question.

A Portrait of Desire.......2004-10-16

Ruth Puttermesser's world is an entertaining portrait of desire. It is desire (not intelligence)that defines Puttermesser, and desire that undoes her--inch by inch. This narrative tap dances through the decades of Puttermesser's life in a lively and colorful sequence of stories, sub-stories and letters. This is a New York story of desire (which I believe is what pumps the blood in and out of NYC)--the setting is inextricable from the plot. Was Puttermesser NYC personified in this book of magical realism? Reading this book was much like visiting New York city; I was surprised, delighted, horrified and saddend all at once. But most of all, I was satisfied.

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A Love of Words
Literary High Priestess (or Chief Rabbi)
For those readers who love good literary criticism

The Din in the Head
Cynthia Ozick
Manufacturer: Houghton Mifflin
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0618470506

Book Description

One of America's foremost novelists and critics, Cynthia Ozick has won praise and provoked debate for taking on challenging literary, historical, and moral issues. Her new collection of spirited essays focuses on the essential joys of great literature, with particular emphasis on the novel. With razor-sharp wit and an inspiring joie de vivre, she investigates unexpected byways in the works of Leo Tolstoy, Saul Bellow, Helen Keller, Isaac Babel, Sylvia Plath, Susan Sontag, and more. In a posthumous and hilariously harassing "(Unfortunate) Interview with Henry James," Ozick's hero is shocked by a lady reporter. In "Highbrow Blues" and in reflections on her own early fiction, she writes intimately of "the din in our heads, that relentless inner hum," and the curative power of literary imagination. The Din in the Head is sure to please fans, win new readers, and excite critical controversy and acclaim.

Customer Reviews:

A Love of Words.......2007-03-20

This is a collection of literate essays about literary characters and subjects. If you think you might never get around to actually reading an entire book by such authors as Henry James, Saul Bellow, John Updike, or Leo Tolstoy - you can read this book instead and get a sense of who these authors are and what they have to say.

It's not that Ozick's book is like a cheat sheet or a Cliff's Notes summary. She focuses on some specifically revealing vignettes from the lives of each of these authors, or on some particularly telling aspect of their styles. You'll get something meaty out of these essays. They'll enable you to hold your own in intelligent conversation about these figures at cocktail parties.

But these essays might give you an itch to actually go back and read these authors. They're not presented here as dry school subjects. They are "as seen by" Ozick. And her commentaries act like a prism, separating the white beacon of fame that has been shone on these iconic literary figures into distinct personal colors.

Even if you don't go anywhere with these essays though, I think you'll enjoy reading them for sheer pleasure. Ozick has a spectacularly limber vocabulary. Her sentences are pirouettes and gran jetes. She has an admitted love affair with words and can arc them across dazzling spans, concluding with fresh twists on her subject matter.

The last essays in this book deal with a Zionist author, and then with a man who single-handedly produced a new translation and gloss of the Bible. These are subjects I wouldn't have ordinarily delved into for casual reading. But in a relatively few pages, Ozick shows some of the interesting insights to be drawn from these men's labors.

Then if you like this book, I highly recommend the essay collections of Thomas Mallon. He is also a master at illuminating literary careers with a turn of phrase.

Literary High Priestess (or Chief Rabbi).......2007-03-19

What prompts me to put in my 2 cents, or 3 stars, on this essay collection I read last year, are Ozick's condemnatory remarks in the April 2007 issue of Harper's Magazine about reviewers like us. She complains that "unlettered exhibitionists" have control, through Amazon's star system, of rewarding or denigrating writers; that "Amazon's unspoken credo is that anyone, or everyone, is well suited to make literary judgments"; that "Amazon encourages naive and unqualified readers for easy prose and uplifting endings to expose their insipidities to a mass audience."

This elitist rant is in the middle of an otherwise sensible exploration of serious literature's diminishing readership. Ozick longs for a time when critics like Lionel Trilling could assume the existence of a coterie of readers excited by novels past and present, and before closing she lists what she calls "a potential critical aggregate" of a dozen or so mostly East Coast literary commentators who might reliably keep the flames of high literature alive. I would suggest to Ms. Ozick that the keepers of the flames are more numerous than her eminent band, most of whom are seated firmly in academy chairs, and more widespread. At least a partial answer to her "better question...not who will read, or how they will read, but why," might be found on websites such as this one, which she so unnecessarily trashes. She should know, as she believes Trilling knew, "that despite the loftiness of one's will or desire, the gross and the immediate impose themselves."

That last quote is from her essay on Trilling in "The Din in the Head" collection. I bought a copy after reading a glowing review in the L.A. Times, mainly for the title essay, which turns out to be the shortest in the book and the thinnest in scope. She doesn't know quite what to make of electronic media's impact on literature. Non-literary media are noisy and ubiquitous, produced by crowds for crowds. I share her suspicion of crowds, but I retain, however shakily, a belief in the democratic impulse that, like it or not, embraces crowds.

Some of the other essays brought me back in touch with Henry James, Sylvia Plath, Delmore Schwartz, Saul Bellow, Isaac Babel, writers I'd studied as an undergrad at a university that I won't name -- why be a shameless exhibitionist? I like Ozick; she's a thoughtful, penetrating commentator, and I'm grateful to her for her attentiveness. Bottom line: I would've given this book 5 stars had I not read her savaging remarks about Amazon in Harper's.

For those readers who love good literary criticism .......2006-12-18

Cynthia Ozick is along with being a distinguished novelist one of the best literary critics in America. Her essays are probing examinations of the art and moral meaning of Literature. In this collection she writes about Bellow, Updike, Babel, the young Tolstoy, Kipling, Delmore Schwartz, Lionel Trilling and of course her great master and teacher, Henry James. In a sense in writing about them she is defending the Literary Tradition, the importance of the Novel, of the inner worlds which only words can make. Her tone can be at times a little too schoolmistressy but she is upholding an idea of Literature as the bright book of life, and as a source of true spiritual sustenance.
She has been chided for again fighting in this work a battle which many claim already won, the battle to preserve the significance of the Novel as a form. She too has been taken to task for that haughty elitist tone, which sets limits and standards, and sees a place in the Tradition as something to be struggled and aspired for.
She is a deep person in feeling and often her prose is complicated and awkward, an overwhelming rush of words upon words upon words. But her mind is a fine and powerful one and she time and again makes the right distinction and perception.
Above all readers of these essays can rest assured that they have entered a kind of small higher world, a world where writing and thought , the search for truth and beauty are given a special measure of devotion. This is very apparent in her long essay on the master scholar of Jewish Mystical Literature Gershom Scholem.
Ozick is like James a writer of great intelligence, and careful moral judgment.
It is just a very great pleasure and privilege to read her work.

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Good Introduction to Tolstoy
"The sun always rises and sets red in the steppe."
"As one needs nothing oneself, why not live for others?": Olenin's epiphany
A real find
Excellent Short Fiction From Tolstoy

The Cossacks (Modern Library Classics)
Leo Tolstoy
Manufacturer: Modern Library
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0812975049
Release Date: 2006-02-14

Book Description

This 1862 novel, in a vibrant new translation by Peter Constantine, is Tolstoy’s semiautobiographical story of young Olenin, a wealthy, disaffected Muscovite who joins the Russian army and travels to the untamed frontier of the Caucasus in search of a more authentic life. While striving to adopt the rough and ready lifestyle of the local Cossacks, Olenin falls in love with a free-spirited girl whose fiancé turns out to be a formidable opponent. Showcasing the philosophical insight that would characterize Tolstoy’s later masterpieces, this long overdue translation is a revelation.

Download Description

Olenin, a young Russian aristocrat finds himself as a Russian army officer, serving at a remote Cossack outpost in the Caucasus. Here among the Tatars, the Chechens, and the Old Believers, is the place where Olenin will find his love, a beautiful Cossack girl. The only problem is she is promised to a Cossack warrior. Please Note: This book is easy to read in true text, not scanned images that can sometimes be difficult to decipher. The Microsoft eBook has a contents page linked to the chapter headings for easy navigation. The Adobe eBook has bookmarks at chapter headings and is printable up to two full copies per year. Both versions are text searchable.

Customer Reviews:

Good Introduction to Tolstoy.......2006-08-31

This is a good first read of Tolstoy's material. It is not nearly as long as _War and Peace_, but is still a good first exposure to the great works of Leo Tolstoy.

"The sun always rises and sets red in the steppe.".......2006-02-26

By the age of 24, Russian aristocrat Dmitri Andreich Olenin has "squandered half his fortune," failed to complete his university courses, and hasn't selected a career. "Lacking nothing and bound by nothing," he volunteers as a cadet for service in the Caucasus. Here he hopes to find adventure, and by strict economy, perhaps even pay his debts. On his last night in Moscow, the aristocratic Olenin muses about love and the meaning of life. While his friends secretly question Olenin's judgment in volunteering for military service, Olenin sees his posting to the Caucasus as an escape, and even possibly a second chance at life.

Once in the Caucasus, Olenin rents a rough hut in a Cossack village. While he wants so much to belong and be viewed as a warrior, he remains an awkward outsider. In the Cossack village, he is treated--at best--as some sort of curiosity, and at worst--with hostility. Olenin befriends an old Cossack warrior who quickly discovers that the Russian is a good source of free drinks, and over time, Olenin falls in love with an elusive Cossack maiden named Maryanka.

While "The Cossacks" is not first-tier Tolstoy, nonetheless, it is an enjoyable tale that allows a solid glimpse into Cossack social life. Olenin is both an observer and an admirer of Cossack culture, and yet in many ways, he is vastly unsuited for the life he longs to be part of. The bucolic social life of the Cossacks is presented through the idealistic eyes of Olenin, and he observes the Cossack men carousing drunkenly every night, and maintaining a camaraderie that ultimately excludes him. When Olenin comes to the conclusion that life is a precious thing to be savoured, he also confronts the horrors of meaningless death. The Cossacks hunt Chechens for sport, and after a young Chechen is killed, they strip his thin body for the spoils represented by the rags he wears. But "it's a serious thing to destroy a human being," and the killing of the Chechen ultimately has tragic ramifications--displacedhuman

"As one needs nothing oneself, why not live for others?": Olenin's epiphany.......2005-07-06

In the middle of _The Cossacks_, Dmitri Olenin, a young Russian cadet reflects joyfully, "Happiness is to live for others. How clear it is!," while being mercilessly bitten by mosquitos during a deer hunt. Despite the fact that his "whole body [is] consumed by a consuming itch," Olenin revels in the beauties of bountiful nature. It is almost as if he gives himself up to the mosquitos, whom he imagines are yelling out to each other, "Over here, boys! Here's someone we can devour!" Tolstoy develops the scene with such skill. We see Olenin's joy quickly turn into confusion and mortal terror.

Leo Tolstoy's _The Cossacks_ (begun in 1852 and published in 1862) is about a young aristocrat's quest for happiness and his uncertainty about what will make him happy--whether a life given up to the senses or a life devoted to others. The novel begins with a late night discussion in a Moscow alehouse about Olenin's relationship with a wealthy Moscow woman whom he is about to abandon. One of his friends responds, "You have not yet loved, and you don't know what love is!" Dmitri bids his friends adieu and sets out by carriage for a military assignment in the faraway Caucasus to start life anew and to find out what love means (ironically, while serving as a military cadet in a war).

The novel contrasts Dmitri Olenin with Lukashka the Snatcher, a young fearless Cossack soldier admired by everyone in his village. While Dmitri's life lacks purpose and direction, Lukashka is driven to become an ideal Cossack warrior. Lukashka is a carouser who is a brave fighter. Dmitri envies Lukashka's life and, in particular, the defined Cossack traditions to which Lukashka devotes himself.

In an incredible early scene, Tolstoy introduces Lukashka on duty at a military look-out point that protects the Cossack village from Chechen "marauders." The tension of the scene and the philosophical undertones also reminded me immediately of Hemingway--as another reviewer commented. In a brilliant transition, Tolstoy revisits this scene later in the novel as seen through Olenin's eyes.

The novel, while mythic in its discussions of love and youthful idealism, takes place in a background of ethnic conflict and suspicion. The Russian troops are quartered in a Cossack village, and the Russians, Cossacks, and Chechens are all in conflict, either in outright war or deep distrust. One of the most endearing characters of the novel, Uncle Eroksha, a rogish seventy year old villager and hunter, suggests the pointlessness of all this division. Uncle Eroksha, who is "a blood brother to all," maintains that "Everyone has his own rules. But if you ask me, it's all the same."

For the contemporary reader, the book also offers some historical context to the current conflict in Chechnia, between the Chechens and the Russians. Cynthia Ozick's introduction provides useful historical background information and challenges Tolstoy's romanticized depiction of Cossack society. Ozick discusses a history of ethnic cleansing in the region that goes back many centuries. The fierce pride in culture and clan often has dangerous effects, a subject that Tolstoy does not really address.

The novel is steeped in sensuous passages, of nature, war, and physical attraction, which are unforgettable. Over the course of the novel, Dmitri becomes obsessed with a Cossack peasant woman named Maryanka. The passages describing his infatuation are intense. The narrator describes Dmitri's first long look at Maryanka as follows: "With the quick and hungry curiosity of youth, he noticed despite himself the strong virginal lines that stood out beneath the thin calico smock, and her beautiful eyes were fixed on him with childish terror and wild curiousity." This gives a taste of the vividness of Tolstoy's writing and the wonderful skill of the translator, Peter Constantine.

This is a truly excellent novel. I agree with the reviewer who says that it is a great novel to introduce Tolstoy to new readers since it is short and accessible. I would recommend this edition in particular because the translation is great and Ozick's introduction is astute. Many of the major themes in Tolstoy's work are evident here, particularly the conflict between sensual and spiritual impulses.

A real find.......2004-08-09

Here's a book that not many people know about which should be read by all. It was really just what I needed to read, having just dropped out of university myself. Also, does anyone else think that this book must have greatly influenced Hemingway? It sounds just like him, and he says in A Moveable Feast that he was reading lots of Russian stuff at the start of his career. I realize it might just be that the translator liked Hemingway, but even so it's amazing how much it ends up reading like one of his novels and is so unlike the rest of Tolstoy.

Excellent Short Fiction From Tolstoy.......2002-11-27

Tolstoy is one of the most famous names in Russian literature. Sadly, the sheer size of most of his celebrated works, i.e. War and Peace, tend to make many readers anxious. However, readers fail to realize that Tolstoy has quite a phenomenal collection of short fiction, such as this 178-page novella.

Tolstoy explores the dissatisfaction a young Russian aristocrat holds towards the emptiness of high-society, and his subsequent journey in search of meaning. The aristocrat finds himself as a young Russian army officer, serving at a remote Cossack outpost in the Caucasus. Here he finds that his wealth and breeding do not garner him respect. Instead he is looked upon as an outsider, and an unwelcome one at that.

Nevertheless, the aristocrat finds himself in love with a beautiful Cossack girl, who is promised to a Cossack warrior. Tolstoy discusses the emotions that rise between these three parties regarding love, class, and sacrifice.

Book Description

This compelling memoir takes readers through the eyes of a child surviving World War II in Nazi-occupied Poland. As a nine-year-old, the author witnessed his father being herded into a truck—never to be seen again. He, his mother, and sister fled to Warsaw to live in disguise as Catholics under the noses of the Nazi SS, constantly fearful of discovery and persecution. A sobering reminder of the personal toll of the Holocaust on Jews during World War II, this book is a harrowing portrait of one child's loss of innocence. This edition contains previously unpublished content from the original text.

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