Memoirs of an Anti-Semite: A Novel in Five Stories (New York Review Books (Paperback)) - Softcover

Rezzori, Gregor Von

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1590172469 ISBN 13: 9781590172469

Publisher: NYRB Classics, 2007

Synopsis

The elusive narrator of this beautifully written, complex, and powerfully disconcerting novel is the scion of a decayed aristocratic family from the farther reaches of the defunct Austro-Hungarian Empire. In five psychologically fraught episodes, he revisits his past, from adolescence to middle age, a period that coincides with the twentieth-century’s ugliest years. Central to each episode is what might be called the narrator’s Jewish Question. He is no Nazi. To the contrary, he is apolitical, accommodating, cosmopolitan. He has Jewish friends and Jewish lovers, and their Jewishness is a matter of abiding fascination to him. His deepest and most defining relationship may even be the strange dance of attraction and repulsion that throughout his life he has conducted with this forbidden, desired, inescapable, imaginary Jewish other. And yet it is just his relationship that has blinded him to–and makes him complicit in–the terrible realities his era.

Lyrical, witty, satirical, and unblinking, Gregor von Rezzori’s most controversial work is an intimate foray into the emotional underworld of modern European history.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

Set in Central Europe between World Wars I and II, this work comprises five interrelated stories that depict one man's ambivalent, at times obsessive, relations with Jewish friends and lovers--including his Jewish wife.

About the Author:

Gregor von Rezzori (1914—1998) studied at the University of Vienna and for a time lived in Bucharest. In Germany, after World War II, he became active as a writer and in radio broadcasting and filmmaking activities. American readers first discovered is writing in English with the appearance of his story, "Troth," in The New Yorker. Mr. Rezzori's books include Tales from Maghrebinia, Oedipus Triumphs at Stalingrad, The Hussar, The Snows of Yesteryear, The Death of My Brother Abel, and Anecdotage. He lived with his wife in a village near Florence, Italy until his death.

Deborah Eisenberg is the author of three collections of short stories and the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship, the Rea Award, and three O. Henry Awards. She lives in New York City.

Translated by Joachim Neugroschel and the author

About this edition

• Publisher: NYRB Classics
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 1590172469
• ISBN 13: 9781590172469
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320