Isaac's Torah

A Novel

Angel Wagenstein, Elizabeth Frank, Deliana Simeonova

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Paperback

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English

Other Press LLC
15 December 2022

Religious & spiritual fiction

Now for the first time in paperback, and in celebration of the author's 100th birthday, Isaac's Torah is a testament to the enduring power of humor and resilience in the face of existential atrocities.

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.

By: Angel Wagenstein
Translated by: Elizabeth Frank, Deliana Simeonova
Imprint: Other Press LLC
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 203mm, Width: 133mm,
Weight: 369g
ISBN: 9781635423716
ISBN 10: 1635423716
Pages: 320
Publication Date: 15 December 2022
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Angel Wagenstein is a Bulgarian screenwriter and author. His film Stars, shot in 1959 by the German director Konrad Wolf, was awarded the Special Prize of the Jury at the Cannes Film Festival. His fiction includes the triptych of novels Isaac's Torah, Far from Toledo, and Farewell, Shanghai, which have been published in French, German, Russian, English, Czech, Polish, Macedonian, Spanish, Italian, Hebrew, and other languages. Farewell, Shanghai received the Jean Monnet Prize of European literature in 2004, and in 2022 was adapted into a six-episode television series directed by Radu Mihăileanu. Wagenstein is a Chevalier of the Ordre national du Merite and a Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Elizabeth Frank is a Professor of Modern Languages and Literature at Bard College. Deliana Simeonova was born in Bulgaria and studied English philology and American literature at the University of Sofia. She has worked for civil-society NGOs in Tajikistan, Serbia, Liberia, and now does that work in her native Bulgaria.

Reviews for Isaac's Torah: A Novel

Named an Editor's Choice by the Denver Post A powerful novel...Isaac's mesmerizing voice charms through every disaster, and engages and delights the reader without distracting from Wagenstein's profound insights into life's absurdities. -Publishers Weekly (starred review) Intelligent and deeply felt. -Kirkus Reviews In Wagenstein's engaging historical novel, the wry humor reveals both the unbelievable horrors of history and fleeting moments of transcendence...Great for reading groups. -Booklist Wagenstein's picaresque story portrays Jewish humor and Jewish wisdom as inextricable twins and time-tested agents of survival. -The Nation A very funny book about very sad events. Isaac Blumenfeld suffers at the hands of the Nazis, loses his entire family when his village is invaded, and is sent to a Siberian labor camp because of mistaken identity. But, incredibly, Bulgarian author Angel Wagenstein makes us laugh. -Foreword Reviews Angel Wagenstein's novel is an important monument to the lives of those who suffered the horrors of the two World Wars and all those wars' extenuations, but rather than a lamentation of Blumenfeld's, and the Jewish people's, loss, it is a celebration of his and their lives. As uplifting as it is tragic, Isaac's Torah is a great contribution to the literature of the period, the Wars, and the Holocaust, and to world literature as a whole. -Three Percent Armed with Yiddish lore and the wide-ranging advice of a colorful brother-in-law who is alternately a rabbi and an atheist, this simple tailor's son from the shtetl of Kolodetz tries to navigate a course through the great terrors of his age. -Washington City Paper