Memoirs of an Anti-Semite (New York Review Books) (Paperback)

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Review
"Rezzori has a remarkable lyric gift that he uses to describe the wide expanses of Bukovina. In a series of beautiful set pieces, he evokes the vanishing world of Germanic chivalry, already in its last stages of degeneration into the debased kitsch that the Nazis would exploit, the emerging commercial melee of post-war Bucharest with its Armenian and Jewish shopkeepers and its red light district; and shabby-genteel Vienna, where he socializes almost exclusively with Jewish artists and musicians." --NextBook
"In his remarkable "Memoirs of an Anti-Semite: A Novel in Five Stories,.".von Rezzori brought his lost homeland back to life so sharply and in such pungent detail that we feel from the first sentences as though we have lived there ourselves...For all its poignancy, "Memoirs" is no foray into nostalgia but a deliberately fragmented, and often quite funny, version of the classic German bildungsroman' -- what might be termed the novel of formative influences." -"The New York Sun"
" A superb and unsettling satirical novel from 1979, in which the cosmopolitan and apolitical narrator exposes the ugliness of 20th-century Europe through his attraction-repulsion obsession with Jews." -Martin Levin, "The Globe & Mail"
"Gregor von Rezzori, in his newly reissued novel "Memoirs of an Anti-Semite," meshes the micro and macro versions of interwar anti-Semitism very skillfully indeed... [a] welcome new edition in the library of classics kept evergreen by The New York Review of Books... Writing as he did from the wreckage of postwar Europe, Gregor von Rezzori could claim the peculiar distinction of being one of the few survivors to treat this ultimate catastrophe in the mild language ofunderstatement. This is what still gives his novel the power to shock." -Christopher Hitchens, "The Atlantic"
Gregor von Rezzori's "novels and memoirs revealed the tragic sweep of European history through two world wars and beyond." -"The New York Times" (Michael Kaufmann, Obituary)
"The last great remembrancer of a region that has vanished from the map and mind of Europe." -"The New York Review of Books "(Michael Ignatieff)
A "rich, disquietingly good book...these stories...are wonderfully intricate in character and texture, studded with observation" -"The New York Times" (Stanley Kauffmann)
"A literature in which the author envisions himself as a character in a design arranged from the data of his life as another author might arrange items from fictitious notes...He is an artist, devilishly honest, stubborn, the creator and the created of an artwork about a survivor...It is through Mr. von Rezzori's art, rather than through any vanity or apology, that we are enlightened." -"The New York Times Book Review "(Stanley Kauffmann)
"Here is a work that tackles-without reproof, without illusions, and without shallow moral judgments; by turns, engaged and detached, funny and sad, tender and heartless-the phenomenon of anti-Semitism, and its correlative anti-Goyism, the double tragedy of banal misunderstandings that changed the face of Europe and the world." -Bruce Chatwin
"What we recall...is the breathtaking richness of the history it recounts and the extraordinary way it makes time pass by...Yet it is not alone for the vividness of its settings and characters that we attend to "Memoirs of an Anti-Semite," We also savor the sound of the author's voice, an extraordinaryblend of bitter self-denigration and sweet recollection. We relish his haunting evocations of twilight...and of course we an never avert our eyes from the dissection of anti-Semitism that keeps going on in the background-a dissection that amounts to an anatomy of Central Europe in the 20th century." -"The New York Times" (Christopher Lehmann-Haupt)
"The 'I' in these pages-ambitious dreamer, insatiable lover, solitary night-wanderer-achieves more than catharsis: he comes to vivid, full life in the mind of the reader. The gloriously rendered settings...are an opulent banquet table spread for every taste." -"Die Welt"

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2 Reviews 5 star:  (2) 4 star:    (0) 3 star:    (0) 2 star:    (0) 1 star:    (0)           Average Customer Review 5.0 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)		Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Most Helpful Customer Reviews   3 of 3 people found the following review helpful: 5.0 out of 5 stars A brilliant novel about coming of age in pre-War Europe., 11 Jun 1998 By A Customer This review is from: Memoirs of an Anti-Semite (Vintage International) (Paperback) "Memoirs of an Anti-Semite" is a series of short stories, loosely connected and remotely chronological, which capture the inner turmoil and outer turbulence the narrator experiences while growing up in Eastern Europe between the Wars. Romantic Cafe's, spicy brothels, Viennese sophistication and Carpathian bleakness are but a few of the contrasting realities which continue to mold and shape the mind and soul of this young Rumanian. The pathological anti-Semitism he acquires while growing up in a petty bourgeois family in the Bukovina becomes an increasing source of irony in this novel, as the narrator finds himself surrounded more and more by Jewish friends and lovers. Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)   5.0 out of 5 stars Exploding prejudices and settled opinions, 3 Jul 2009 By  A Common Reader "See all mybook reviews at ww... (Sussex, England) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)       Gregor von Rezzori was a deeply reflective writer. He wrote what might be called memoir-based fiction, but he was not just interested in his stories, but wanted to bring out the meaning behind them. His mind was hugely inventive and the reader gets the impression of someone who can see all points of view and incorporate them into his stories. He seldom allowed his characters to get away with expressing their prejudices and long-held opinions but always set them in juxtaposition with someone holding an opposing view, or else showed the absurbity of their statements by setting them in a context of personal decline and ultimate failure. Memoirs of an Anti-Semite consists of five stories, illustrating the decline of the old European aristocracy and the prejudices they took with them to their demise. It would be a mistake to think that this book is as its title might suggest, "anti-Semitic". Quite the contrary, for although the book's characters exhibit anti-Semitic attitudes, the author allows this to show their ignorance and stupidity. Very often the Jews they despise are more clever, witty and successful than their old-European adversaries, and in some ways, the book would be better titled as "confession" rather than "memoir". Memoirs of an Anti-Semite consists of five stories, each one revealing a different aspect of the anti-semitic position. This book is rich, not only in the quality of the story-telling but also in the writing. Rezzori's talent is on a par with other writers of the inter-war period such as Stefan Zweig. Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this) Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review › See all 2 customer reviews...		Ad feedback   Search Customer Reviews Only search this product's reviews

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