The Book of Israel - Rilegato

Gavron, Jeremy

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 0743220986 ISBN 13: 9780743220989

Casa editrice: Scribner, 2002

Riassunto

By bringing out the comic and quotidian in 130 years of Jewish history, Jeremy Gavron paints a wonderfully fresh and convincing portrait of a dissipating identity. A story of ordinary life over an extraordinary century. In one Jewish family, the forename Israel is handed down from generation to generation. But as parts of the family move across the world - beginning in Lithuania at the end of the 19th century and finishing in London at the beginning of the 21st - different Israels in different countries have very different relationships with the name and the weighty expectation it represents. In Dunsk, living under the hovering fear of Russian pogroms, Israel's parents have great hopes for him as a scholar and rabbi. In the rag-trade sweatshops of turn-of-the-century Leeds, Israel finds advancement is earned in more secular ways. In the harsh open lands of South Africa, Israel struggles between the practicalities of business life and supporting the utopia of a Jewish homeland; during World War Two the schoolboy Israel Dunsky becomes Jack Dunn. And after the war, as Jack becomes a captain of industry, the name that was repressed gains an even greater resonance. Those different Israels are at the heart of this book, described in the letters, journals and speeches of the people around them. Bold in conception and brilliant in execution, The Book of Israel brings the everyday to the centre of the 20th century Jewish story. The enormous range of voices is perfectly rendered, both heartfelt and comic, the characters completely individual but also speaking for the experience of more than a century's Jewish deracination.

Su questo libro

Recensione

Book of Israel by Jeremy Gavron
''An intelligent, often very moving novel, a deserving winner of the Encore Prize'
Daily Telegraph 2/8
'Rich in the detail of Anglo-Jewish experience'
Guardian 2/8
'Gavron has crafted an understated and self-effacing fiction with the power of a multi-volume epic'
Observer 31/8
‘Jeremy Gavron certainly shows a sophisticated grasp of his material, using letters, newspaper cuttings and other literary fragments to capture the great sweep of history’
Sunday Telegraph 4/12

L'autore

Jeremy Gavron worked as a journalist in Africa and India, and spent two years as a writer-in-residence in a prison. He is the author of the critically-acclaimed MOON

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Scribner
• Data di pubblicazione: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0743220986
• ISBN 13: 9780743220989
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 320