商品簡介
Isaac Jacob Blumenfeld grows up in Kolodetz, a small town near Lvov. When he is a boy the town belongs to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, then changes hands among Poland, the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, and finally the Soviet Union again. Isaac survives the absurdity and horror in Eastern Europe by pretending to be a fool. If this is an old Jewish art, Isaac is a consummate artist. He plays the fool all his life, from his boyhood in the Kolodetz shtetl to the time when as an accused war criminal he finds himself in a gulag in Siberia.
Inseparable from Isaac's life and story are the Yiddish jokes and fables of Kolodetz. These and the counsel of his dear friend, the rabbi and the chairman of the town's Atheists' Club, Shmuel Ben-David, sustain Isaac through two world wars, three concentration camps, and five motherlands. In this homage to the grand tradition of Jewish storytelling, Angel Wagenstein puts on record what is perhaps the central story of the last one hundred and makes from it a sad, funny, warm, and wise book.
作者簡介
Angel Wagenstein
Angel Wagenstein is a prizewinning Bulgarian novelist. His novel, Isaac's Torah, has been published in Bulgaria, Germany, Russia, France, the Czech Republic, and is forthcoming from Handsel Books. Farewell, Shanghai, his third novel, won the Jean Monnet award in 2004.
Elizabeth Frank
Elizabeth Frank is a Professor of Modern Languages and Literature at Bard College.
Deliana Simeonova
Deliana Simeonova was born in Bulgaria and studied English philology and American literature at the University of Sofia. She has worked for civil-society NGOs in Tajikistan, Serbia, Liberia, and now does that work in her native Bulgaria.
