Memoirs Of A Fortunate Jew: An Italian Story [Paperback]

'Luminous, almost light-hearted, autobiography about a family of Italian Jews under Mussolini.'

'The tone of Segre's beautifully written autobiography, which reads like a Bildungsroman, is certainly ironic rather than tragic.'

Adrian Lyttelton, (The New York Review of Books)

'Imagine an Italian Jew from a prominent but impoverished Piedmont family serving in the British Army alongside an Arab and under a Jewish Palestinian sergeant, and you have in a nutshell the cultural confusion Professor Segre so cannily explores in this labyrinthine, spell-binding autobiography, full of passionate tenderness.'

'A fascinating description of childhood in Fascist Italy, a moving account of adolescence in Mandatory Palestine, an extraordinary book, very sad and very funny at the same time.'

'A spellbinding biography of genuine literary value that reads like an adventure story. Those familiar with the bitter and depressing tone of the Jews' misfortunes in the maelstrom of wars and holocausts will derive a unique freshness from the irony, humour and sensuality of Dan Segre, who acknowledges that he is a fortunate Jew.'

'He is good at reconstructing events and even better at the more difficult art of recapturing moods and atmospheres ... an unusually attractive book - attractive in its irony, its energy and its moral insight. Mr Segre had some rich material to work with, and he has done it justice.'

'The only thing most of us know clearly about Nazis is that they were the scum of the earth, but this pathetic, marginal, and in the end rejected Italian fascist does not fit into any Europe or any history that most of us know ... He must be a man of extraordinary moral courage and self-knowledge, since nowhere does he deal lightly with himself ... Maybe the final heroism was to write this book ... I think this book is unique and a sort of masterpiece.'

'Taut and illuminating ... memorable ... written with the humility of he who confesses himself and with the honesty of he who bore witness.'

"Taut and illuminating memorable written with the humility of he who confesses himself and with the honesty of he who bore witness." Primo Levi "Luminous, almost light-hearted, autobiography about a family of Italian Jews under Mussolini." Frederic Raphael, Sunday Times Segre tells the story of his childhood and adolescence in Mussolini's Italy. Nurtured in a world of aristocratic privilege, he emerged naive and unprepared for the realities that awaited him. The crash of 1929 and the introduction of Mussolini's anti-Jewish laws saw him on the boat to Tel Aviv, a rare immigrant with a first-class ticket, jacket, silk tie and detachable linen collar, thrust into the pioneering culture of Palestine in the 1930s. Segre explores the pathos and contradictions of such situations with a keen sense of irony which lifts the book out of the world of memoirs and into the realm of literature.

Born in Italy in 1922, Dan Vittorio Segre lived in Israel for almost 50 years working as a diplomat, academic and journalist. He has now returned to the family home near Turin. Recently he helped found the Institute for Mediterranean Studies at the Italian University of Lugano, Switzerland.