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Product Description
Review
`Can the darkest events of the twentieth century and of all human history be used to show the folly of hope? And can the result be so funny that you burst out laughing again and again? If you doubt this is possible, read Hope: A Tragedy. You won't regret it.'
--John Gray, author of Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals
'This scabrous and determinedly iconoclastic novel about Jewish identity and the stifling grip of history may be one of the funniest and most thought-provoking novels you'll read all year . . . Hope: A Tragedy still feels bracingly original and challenging, a happy cross between Roth and Woody Allen that is fully of devilish and piercing humour.' --Sunday Times
--John Gray, author of Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals
'This scabrous and determinedly iconoclastic novel about Jewish identity and the stifling grip of history may be one of the funniest and most thought-provoking novels you'll read all year . . . Hope: A Tragedy still feels bracingly original and challenging, a happy cross between Roth and Woody Allen that is fully of devilish and piercing humour.' --Sunday Times
Product Description
Blackly hilarious, dangerously subversive, extraordinarily bold – this is liable to be the most controversial novel of the year
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
Solomon Kugel moves to a small town with his wife and son, hoping for a fresh start. He is a man plagued by worries, insecurities and desperate to discover those 'last words' which he should leave for the world whenever he departs it. His fresh start is hampered by the arrival of his mother - who claims she is a holocaust survivor, although she isn't - and a disgruntled tenant. Also, there is the small matter of Anne Frank, now elderly and wonderfully cantankerous, alive and well and living in his attic.
This novel could be terrible - in some ways, it almost should be terrible. However, it is, in fact, wickedly funny and very moving. Solomon Kugel is just a terrific character, trying to appease his wife, tolerate his mother and her odd ways and decide what to do about Anne Frank. Can he throw an "elderly, half-mad Holocaust survivor out of his house?" Add in the fact that an arsonist is torching lovely farmhouses in the area where he has just brought, you guessed it, a farmhouse, and you have a funny and thought provoking read.
This novel could be terrible - in some ways, it almost should be terrible. However, it is, in fact, wickedly funny and very moving. Solomon Kugel is just a terrific character, trying to appease his wife, tolerate his mother and her odd ways and decide what to do about Anne Frank. Can he throw an "elderly, half-mad Holocaust survivor out of his house?" Add in the fact that an arsonist is torching lovely farmhouses in the area where he has just brought, you guessed it, a farmhouse, and you have a funny and thought provoking read.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
It's difficult to review this book without giving away the central part of the story but I will try to do so:
Having read Shalom Auslander's autobiography ("Foreskin's Lament") I was really looking forward to reading this novel. I like his style of writing which is, I would describe, Jewish self-deprecating - some will find it offensive, others hilarious.
This book tells the story of Solomon Kugel, a man who lives with his family in Stockton and wants to be normal, wants peace and quiet, wants everyone to be happy. His mother refers every discussion to her experience in the concentration camps of World War 2, despite the fact she was born after the war in America. With the most ridiculous twist I think I've ever seen in a book, Kugel's life is turned upside down by a discovery he makes and how he and his family manage it.
There is much in this book to hate at face value - Hitler is described as optimistic, observational humour is repeatedly made of the Holocaust. The jokes repeat themselves over and over and the writing style in terms of speech is really irritating.
Yet, I found myself enjoying this book. There is a central message to the book which is conveyed throughout to the climax at the end. The book is actually not at all disrespectful to the Holocaust or Holocaust survivors but you have to be willing to read it to appreciate it.
I would definitely recommend this book and look forward to reading the next offering from this author.
Having read Shalom Auslander's autobiography ("Foreskin's Lament") I was really looking forward to reading this novel. I like his style of writing which is, I would describe, Jewish self-deprecating - some will find it offensive, others hilarious.
This book tells the story of Solomon Kugel, a man who lives with his family in Stockton and wants to be normal, wants peace and quiet, wants everyone to be happy. His mother refers every discussion to her experience in the concentration camps of World War 2, despite the fact she was born after the war in America. With the most ridiculous twist I think I've ever seen in a book, Kugel's life is turned upside down by a discovery he makes and how he and his family manage it.
There is much in this book to hate at face value - Hitler is described as optimistic, observational humour is repeatedly made of the Holocaust. The jokes repeat themselves over and over and the writing style in terms of speech is really irritating.
Yet, I found myself enjoying this book. There is a central message to the book which is conveyed throughout to the climax at the end. The book is actually not at all disrespectful to the Holocaust or Holocaust survivors but you have to be willing to read it to appreciate it.
I would definitely recommend this book and look forward to reading the next offering from this author.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
I thought this was a fantastic book. Irreverent doesn't come close to describing it and as a result I often found it very funny indeed and regularly laughed out loud while reading it. However, it is also very touching and insightful, and uses its outrageous premise and its humour to say some very important things about how our lives are affected by our approach to our histories and to hope, grief and fear.
My grandparents and others of my family perished in the Holocaust, so I am well aware that it is a serious, dreadful and deeply tragic event which still exerts a powerful influence and inflicts awful grief and suffering on many people. There is plenty of great literature about all of this by people like Primo Levi, André Schwarz-Bart, Tadeusz Borowski (to whom Auslander makes a sly, witty reference a one point) and many others. There is also plenty of other stuff like Sophie's Choice which I have found obnoxiously exploitative. This book is neither. It is shrewd and funny and in my view a profound book which never mocks the tragedy of the Holocaust itself, but dares to treat attitudes to the Holocaust with something other than awe-struck reverence and uncritical acceptance, summed up in the brilliant observation, "Never forgetting the Holocaust is not the same as never shutting up about it."
The book satirises the embracing of despair and using historic grief as an excuse to evade real, present-day challenges and responsibilities. Auslander paints a merciless and brilliantly funny satirical portrait of a Holocaust-obsessed mother who will not accept the "unhorrible truth that life, tragically, hadn't been so bad," and who pretends have been intimately involved in the Holocaust, indulging in a permanent "Misery Olympics" in which her pain must be greater than anyone else's. There is a brief but telling competitive conversation between two people about who has lost more relatives in the Holocaust and whose opinion should therefore carry more authority, a wonderful satire of a personal counsellor who maintains that hope and aspiration are responsible for the world's problems: if we all effectively hid in an attic expecting and doing nothing then we would never be disappointed and would cause nothing bad to happen, and so on. The book is full of these gems.
Beneath the wit and satire is genuine erudition, often used to terrific comic effect - Spinoza and his mother's deathbed keep popping up, for example, and regularly had me doubled over with laughter. There is real content here, too. Auslander explicitly speaks of the damage which may be done if anyone, not just Jews, defines themselves strongly - as individuals, as an ethnic or religious group or as a nation - by past injustice or injury. It seems to me that Auslander is saying to all of us that our histories are important but that life is here and now and needs to be lived.
There is much more that I would like to say, but this review is probably too long already. I loved this book and if, like me, you share its sense of humour you will find it profound, touching, wise and often very, very funny. I recommend it very warmly.
My grandparents and others of my family perished in the Holocaust, so I am well aware that it is a serious, dreadful and deeply tragic event which still exerts a powerful influence and inflicts awful grief and suffering on many people. There is plenty of great literature about all of this by people like Primo Levi, André Schwarz-Bart, Tadeusz Borowski (to whom Auslander makes a sly, witty reference a one point) and many others. There is also plenty of other stuff like Sophie's Choice which I have found obnoxiously exploitative. This book is neither. It is shrewd and funny and in my view a profound book which never mocks the tragedy of the Holocaust itself, but dares to treat attitudes to the Holocaust with something other than awe-struck reverence and uncritical acceptance, summed up in the brilliant observation, "Never forgetting the Holocaust is not the same as never shutting up about it."
The book satirises the embracing of despair and using historic grief as an excuse to evade real, present-day challenges and responsibilities. Auslander paints a merciless and brilliantly funny satirical portrait of a Holocaust-obsessed mother who will not accept the "unhorrible truth that life, tragically, hadn't been so bad," and who pretends have been intimately involved in the Holocaust, indulging in a permanent "Misery Olympics" in which her pain must be greater than anyone else's. There is a brief but telling competitive conversation between two people about who has lost more relatives in the Holocaust and whose opinion should therefore carry more authority, a wonderful satire of a personal counsellor who maintains that hope and aspiration are responsible for the world's problems: if we all effectively hid in an attic expecting and doing nothing then we would never be disappointed and would cause nothing bad to happen, and so on. The book is full of these gems.
Beneath the wit and satire is genuine erudition, often used to terrific comic effect - Spinoza and his mother's deathbed keep popping up, for example, and regularly had me doubled over with laughter. There is real content here, too. Auslander explicitly speaks of the damage which may be done if anyone, not just Jews, defines themselves strongly - as individuals, as an ethnic or religious group or as a nation - by past injustice or injury. It seems to me that Auslander is saying to all of us that our histories are important but that life is here and now and needs to be lived.
There is much more that I would like to say, but this review is probably too long already. I loved this book and if, like me, you share its sense of humour you will find it profound, touching, wise and often very, very funny. I recommend it very warmly.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
What is this book!
Love it. And to think I had never heard of Shalom... a friend of mine told me about and read me a bit of the book. And I knew instantly it was my kind of book. Read more
Published 8 days ago by Juliana De Carvalho
Wickedly funny and dark - but asking serious questions about the human...
Shalom Auslander's "Hope: A Tragedy" is dark, wicked and very, very funny. I cannot remember reading a book that made me laugh out loud as often as this one. Read more
Published 8 days ago by Ripple
Funny, original and engaging
This is not the sort of book that I would ordinarily read and it took me a few attempts to get going with it, but I read the blurb and it appealed to my dark humour addiction. Read more
Published 10 days ago by FLB
Highly original
Not only original but profoundly serious ..... and extremely funny! It won't be for everybody, but I would recommend it highly.
Published 18 days ago by BK
Hope versus guilt - guilt wins
This is a funny and thought provoking book which challenges the reader to ponder the nature of grief, hope, collective responsibility and guilt. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Don Panik
Hope you like it as much as I did.
With a real interest in WW2, I chose this book, expecting it to be in rather poor taste, but it wasn't. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Guitar Heroine
Thought-provoking, irreverent black comedy
A novel that inverts many of the orthodoxies about remembering and commemorating the past, particularly the Holocaust, and challenges most of the received wisdom concerning the... Read more
Published 1 month ago by Mondoro
'Pessimists don't build gas chambers'
Solomon Kugel finds a stinking, bad-tempered, and very old Anne Frank in his attic. Around this device Shalom Auslander builds a black comedy about history, suffering, and... Read more
Published 1 month ago by Eleanor
Some humorous moments, but really rather annoyingly repetitive
This is a rather unusual and surreal black comedy based around the central character Kugel who discovers he has Anne Frank living in his attic. Er, yes, you read that correctly. Read more
Published 1 month ago by John M
Unusual and humorous
This is a certainly a pretty original book. At times it was laugh out loud funny.
I did think it was going to be a `five star' book but then it did repeat itself a bit... Read more
I did think it was going to be a `five star' book but then it did repeat itself a bit... Read more
Published 1 month ago by The Emperor
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