This novel is the saga in five parts of Isaac Jacob Blumenfeld, who grows up in Kolodetz, a small town near Lvov, which, when he’s a boy, belongs to the Hapsburg Empire, but which subsequently belongs to Poland, Soviet Russia, Germany, and then Russia again. Isaac survives the absurdity and horror of Eastern Europe during the 20th century by pretending to be a fool. If this is an old Jewish art, then Isaac is a consummate artist. He plays the fool all his life, from his boyhood in Kolodetz shetl to the time when he is an accused war criminal 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 chair of the atheist club in Kolodetz, Shmuel Ben David, sustain Isaac through two world wars, three concentration camps, and five motherlands. The book puts on record, with full art, what is perhaps the central story of the last one hundred years. It is a wise book.
Author(s): Angel Wagenstein
Publisher: Other Press
Year: 2008
Language: English
Pages: 320
Tags: Galicia, Jewish history, Holocaust, World War II
Cover
Other Titles
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Instead of a Foreword
Isaac’s Introduction: A Letter to Rabbi Shmuel Ben-David
Isaac’s First Book: How I Went to War, in Order to Bring Victory
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Isaac’s Second Book: The End of My War, or How I Became a Pole
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Isaac’s Third Book: The Red Front, or the Five-Year Plan Speeded-Up
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Isaac’s Fourth Book: “To Each His Own,” or to the Concentration Camps, with Love
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
The Fifth Book of Isaac: “Shnat Shmita.” Once More, from the Beginning. About the Black Sun and the White Nights.
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Final Apocalypse of Revelation
Author’s Acknowledgments
Translators’ Acknowledgments
About the Author
