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B**D
A forgotten classic.
Read this book many years ago and have just read it a second time.A sprawling family saga in the footsteps of Dostoyevsky with marvellous character studies. What a great T.V. series it would make. !!
D**E
Five Stars
Very pleased with product
S**X
'this is the bread of affliction which our forefathers ate in the Land of Egypt'
Compelling family saga set in the Jewish community of Warsaw. The novel opens in the years before WWI : the wealthy patriarch of the family has just returned from taking the waters, bringing with him a new wife - and a stepdaughter. There's much irritation among his children by his previous two wives; they are also unhappy about their father's trusted bailiff, who seems to have altogether too much power. And into this mix comes Asa Heshel Bannet, a young man from a rabbinical background, who has come to study in Warsaw...The characters are convincingly drawn - some religious, holding fast to the old ways, others becoming westernized, refusing arranged marriages - even getting caught up in affairs or becoming apostate. As WWII looms, the whole family is living a very different life..I felt this novel really started as one thing - a typical almost-Victorian family tale, where everyone had their role and life was settled - to the totally disorganized 'free for all', fighting for survival - and to make sense of the world- that depicts the experience of the Jewish people in the late 30s. An excellent read.
M**H
Five Stars
no comment
T**R
long, interesting read.
The Family Moskat is an amazing book. It is very long, very involved and fascinating.It is a family saga, set in Poland and taking in all kinds of Jewish people; clever, stupid, wealthy, poor and everything in between. My only reservation is that there are no dates given, not even in the extremely useful family trees. This makes it quite hard to work out what is happening when and how old people are. Those lovers of history will know dates from events, but the rest of us don't.Certainly a book I would recommend!
K**R
essential
A great book. Starts like a traditional 19th Century novel, and you think it will be about a doomed loveaffair, or a young man's progress, or whatever. And then by the end you realise it is a tragedy aboutthe destruction of the Polish Jewish culture, and the occasional clunking form of the novel, plot andcharacter, is sad history.
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