The Messiah of Stockholm

by Cynthia Ozick

Paperback, 1988

Status

Available

Call number

F OZI

Collection

Publication

Vintage (1988), Edition: Reprint, Paperback, 160 pages

Description

A small group of Jews weave a web of intrigue and fantasy around a book reviewer's contention that he is the son of Borus Schultz, the legendary Polish writer killed by the Nazis before his magnum opus, THE MESSIAH, could be brought to light.

Barcode

2802

Language

User reviews

LibraryThing member fearless2012
I usually lean more towards 'popular' than 'literary' fiction, or however you want to define it, but this book held some interest for me. I've been interested at various times in Swedish mythology, and I've gone through cycles of extreme Slavophilia (at times pro-Polish in nature) as well. So it
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was somewhat interesting for me to hear this story of Northern Europeans bitterly and guiltlessly struggling against the Nazis-- shades of "The Sound of Music". (Although incidentally I know that not only those of European stock like that film.) Or, as it happens, a rather happily somewhat less violent and dramatic story of the orphan of a (murdered) Polish writer tramping about bookstores in Stockholm looking for the lost gems in the Original Polish. (A rather happy phrase, since I find Poles to be very sensible and likeable people, and they deserve a bit more literary nonsense to boast about.) Anyway, literary fiction has its drawbacks, but this tale is at least clear rather than muddled or hypercomplicated, even if it does inevitably find itself at times forced to explain the darker, and sometimes hopelessly muddled, side of life.

At any rate, it was done with great competence.

(8/10)
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LibraryThing member berthirsch
A little treasure, this novella by Cynthia Ozick, set in Stockholm, tells the story of a bereft, unadmired book reviewer. Lars Andemening, is an orphan of WW II, who imagines his father to be the Polish writer Bruno Schulz, who was shot down by Nazi thugs before his works could be fully
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discovered.

Obsessed with this imaginary literary legacy, Lars toils as the Monday reviewer of the local newspaper. His fellow reviewers publish on Wednesday and Friday and have popular followers. Lars chooses to write reviews of Middle European writers like Musil, Canetti, Broch, etc. whose despairing tales can be a turn off to most readers.

Lars is befriended by a local book shop owner, who helps him find a Polish language teacher and finds him editions from behind the Iron Curtain. She also introduces him to a woman claiming to be the daughter of Bruno Shulz, possessing a copy of his unpublished and unseen masterpiece entitled, The Messiah.

What unfolds is a bizarre, whirlwind of events around the crumpled pages of this lost book and how it effects Lars identity and his transformation into a popular reviewer of mundane books.

A funny, satirical tale that pokes fun at book elites while at the same time celebrating those Middle European mini giants of the early 20th century.
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LibraryThing member anitatally
This is one of the strangest and most interesting books I have ever read. I ordered it from Amazon on a whim - I had read something about the author, and I was intrigued. I'm not sure if I will pursue this author - I think she is an acquired taste. But the book certainly is imaginative.
LibraryThing member Michael.Rimmer
I had a shaky start with this book, and ended really enjoying it. Based on a real-life lost manuscript of Polish writer, Bruno Schulz, murdered by the nazis, it explores lost identity, lost family and lost culture, and how those vacuums are filled. The holocaust is woven through the narrative, at
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times explicitly, at times in the drift of smoke from something roasting or on fire.

There's a progression from febrile unreality towards bland materiality, that in gaining, the main character, Lars Andemening, loses something.

Although by the book's end Andemening's trajectory has been from night into day, from private to consensus reality, there remains a thrill of the uncertain, the possibility that the fantastic, veiled and withdrawn, is still imminent, its potential to break through and disrupt still alive and ready to reclaim.

I'm glad that I persevered beyond the first 19 pages, and I'm inspired to seek out the surviving works of Schulz, which is one of the blessings of reading books inspired on the works of other writers.
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ISBN

0394756940 / 9780394756943
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