The Conversion : A Novel - Hardcover

Appelfeld, Aharon

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0805241531 ISBN 13: 9780805241532

Publisher: Schocken, 1998

Synopsis

Our story opens in an Austrian city, two generations before the Holocaust, where almost all of the Jews have converted to Christianity. Today the church bells are pealing for Karl, an ambitious young civil servant whose conversion will clear his path to a coveted high government post. Karl's future looks bright, but with his promotion comes a political crisis that turns his conversion into a baptism by fire, unexpectedly reuniting Karl with his past and forcing him to take a stand he could never have imagined.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

About this title

About the Author

Aharon Appelfeld is the author of twelve internationally acclaimed
novels, including The Iron Tracks, The Retreat, and Unto the Soul (all available from Schocken), and Badenheim 1939. He lives in Jerusalem, Israel.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Reviews

In his 13th novel, celebrated Israeli novelist Appelfeld (The Retreat; Badenheim 1939) delivers a haunting tale of moral compromise and spiritual renewal. Some time before WWII, Karl Hubner, petty municipal bureaucrat in a provincial Austrian town, converts from Judaism to Christianity to advance his career. Karl, an ambivalent figure slightly infected with Austria's pervasive anti-Semitism, disdains his parents' religion as outmoded superstition, yet courageously, even recklessly, confronts violent anti-Semites. Several of Karl's Jewish-born former school chums follow the same path for social acceptance: Martin Schmidt, a twice-divorced, embittered alcoholic lawyer; Freddy, a corpulent and idealistic doctor who helps the poor; and Hochhut, a smug, Jew-hating industrialist who ends up bankrupt in a psycho ward. All of them, it is evident, are self-deluded in thinking that they can abandon their Jewish identity in a country where people feel that "a Jew, even after he's been baptized, is still a Jew. He'll always cheat you or betray you." But Karl is also Everyman, his life passing in an anxious haze of unfulfilled dreams, who exemplifies the question of how far one should compromise to survive. Although the Holocaust is never mentioned (nor are years and dates), it is ever-present?and directly prefigured in the tragic finale, when Karl and his former housemaid, Gloria, an observant Jew with whom he is reunited and falls in love, are murdered by anti-Semitic peasants. Appelfeld, who witnessed the murder of his mother by the Nazis when he was eight, and who later escaped from a concentration camp, brings a great sense of moral urgency to this moving novel, which comes to us in a beautiful translation. Editor, Arthur Samuelson.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Appelfeld's thirteenth novel is a disappointment. Like his previous novels, the plot (although set at the turn of the century) leads the reader's thoughts to World War II and the Holocaust. Over several generations, many of the Jews in a small Austrian town have converted to Christianity--some, like Karl, the protagonist of this novel, because they needed to be Christian to succeed in their careers. Karl gets the promotion he desires, but he soon discovers that one of his jobs is to destroy the town's Jewish market. That conflict, plus the hostility that results after Karl and much-older non-Jewish Gloria, his family's former servant, begin an affair, leads Karl to question his religious beliefs and decision to convert. Trying to escape the anti-Semitism of their own small town, Karl and Gloria flee to another, only to discover that hatred of Jews is not restricted to one locale. The translation is filled with awkward phrases and choppy sentences, and the motivation behind Karl's affair with Gloria is never clear, so buy only for demand. Nancy Pearl

Edition details

• Publisher: Schocken
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0805241531
• ISBN 13: 9780805241532
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240