- Mass Market Paperback: 448 pages
- Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd; New edition edition (26 May 1994)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0140187774
- ISBN-13: 978-0140187779
- Product Dimensions: 19.8 x 13 x 2.4 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,395,377 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
The Brothers Ashkenazi
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Product Description
Product Description
With a large cast of characters, this is a social novel, a family saga set against the rise of capitalism and of a Jewish bourgeoisie in Lodz. It tells the story, through an interwoven plot, of the clash between old traditions and growing desires.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Mass Market Paperback
The Brothers Askenazi is like Roots for Afro-American, a wide-ranging story, wisely told, by an author familiar with the landscape. Taking us about 40 years through a life, we see pre-war Poland, Russian, and vividly get a sense of those times.
Unlike some other Jewish novels, Jews are not always the heros and their character defects are disclosed. How a pogram occurs is vividly explained. Polish peasants worked long hours for precious little money, 70 hours a week slaving over machines, barely able to provide food for their family.
Nonetheless a group of factory owners, Jews included, decided to reduce their wages by 10%. Wives and husbands lamented their fate. The workers gathered to strike and protest, including Jews who worked in the clothing factories. Down with the owners, down with management, give us a living wage, they screamed. Their protests and attempt to interfere with the factory were suppressed. Gradually, down with management, down with the company, turned into Down with the Jews, and while the companies were protected by the police, the Jewish areas were not, as the peasants reeked havor, stealing goods from Jewish homes, burning some, and wreacking vengeance.
His in depth and incisive portrayal of 19th and early 20th century Poland and Russia makes this a classic of Jewish literature.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
8 reviews
20 of 20 people found the following review helpful
Magnificent!!!!
29 Jun 2004
Format:Mass Market Paperback
Excellent story about the rise and fall of the Ashkenazi family, which covers different historical stages like the Industrial Revolution, rise of Capitalism and Communism, World War I, etc. But above all the novel deals with the issue of the nature of the Jewish identity, and it is here where it really succeeds. Singer enforces the fact that for every hardship endured, the Jewish community always ends up being the scapegoat.
What also struck me is the angry and pessimistic tone that Singer employs throughout the story. Most characters are mean and selfish, inflicting continuous suffering to others. As the preface points out (at least in the Spanish edition), Singer seems to have a premonition concerning the fate of the Jewish community in the years following the novel.
This is a fantastic historical saga, very educational and thought-provoking.
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful
It is good story, rich in character and broad in reach.
10 Aug 1999
Format:Mass Market Paperback
The story begins at the beginning, prior to the nearly simultaneous birth of two brothers. Not quite Cain and Abel, the brothers grow apart and together, mixing people,places,positions. With verve and breadth, it tells how each individual becomes his own choices, with the help and the hindrance of the Jewish community in Poland in the early 20th century. What a story!
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Range and Depth
17 Dec 2005
Format:Mass Market Paperback
I.J. Singer's Brothers is a compendium of the Jewish experience in 20th century Europe. The full compliment of elements are here that we have come to expect in a Yiddish novel that deals with the breakdown of traditional Jewish life. Very similar to Buddenbrooks and other novels of a family's decline, the Brothers seems to view history as essentially degenerating; in the end, we are left without a way out of the morass of modernity.
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