Master of the Return: A Novel (Library of Modern Jewish Literature) - Softcover

Reich, Tova

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0815606206 ISBN 13: 9780815606208

Publisher: Syracuse University Press, 1999

Synopsis

This second novel of Tova Reich's delivers a savage and controlled comedy of religious ecstasy. It is by turns, a funny story, mysteriously touching and ponderable before the end.

About this title

About the Author:

Tova Reich is the author of the novels Mara, Master of the Return, and The Jewish War. Her stories have appeared in Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, AGNI, Conjunctions, and elsewhere. In 1996, she won the National Magazine Award for her story "The Lost Girl." She lives outside Washington, D.C.

From Publishers Weekly:

In Mara, Reich, herself the scion of a rabbinical family, took aim at the mores of American Orthodox Jewry. Here, she casts her sly, sardonic eye upon those at the opposite end of the spectrum, so to speakIsraeli penitents. With vigor, irreverence and devastating accuracy, she limns a flock of zany zealots, intoxicated by the rarefied Hassidism of Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav. These cultists, former hippies who are now "high on the One Above," are at once delightfully absurd in their revival, even invention, of bizarre customs (such as the paramount pilgrimage to Rabbi Nahman's Ukranian grave to terminate "nocturnal emissions"); poignant in their misguided, miseducated search for identity and redemption; as self-indulgent in their expiation as they once were in their passions; and alarming in their patent misogyny, racism, deceit, self-righteousness and extreme messianic political agenda. In Reich's hands, plot and character development are sacrificed to an extravagant religious and social parody cum cautionary tale. The penitents remain symbolic figuresas exemplified by an elderly midwife, whose name, Shifra-Puah, evokes her righteous colleagues from the biblical book of Exodus who disobeyed the pharaonic decree to murder male newborns, and Avraham Ger, whose surname, Hebrew for convert, proclaims his adoption of Judaism.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Syracuse University Press
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0815606206
• ISBN 13: 9780815606208
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 250