The Age of Wonders [Paperback]

Aron Appelfeld (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1, 1990 | ISBN-10: 0879237988 | ISBN-13: 978-0879237981

The secure world of a well-established and apparently perfectly assimilated Jewish writer living in an Austrian town before World War II, disintegrates under the force of political and social realities that daily sanctify the old and endemic Austrian anti-Semitism. We learn what we learn through Bruno, the thirteen-year-old son of the family, whose spare and uninflected account discloses the slow onset of disaster. His father, a successful Austrian intellectual, refuses the implications of what s happening and embraces the humiliating routines of Jewish self-hatred. To the vicious attacks on his writing and character, he adds his own voice until, with nothing left not faith, not family, not dignity he disappears. Thirty years later, the war long over, Bruno, at a low point in a childless marriage, responds to ambiguously positive inquiries about his father s work, and travels from his home in Jerusalem to the Austrian town of his childhood. What he encounters in that town, now clean of Jews, enables him to face his own profound losses, and, in some measure, redeem the sins of his father.

Editorial Reviews

Review

A marvelous and disturbing book… an experience both painful and joyous. --Times Literary Supplement (London)

A beautifully composed and profoundly moving work of fiction. No one surpasses Aharon Appelfeld in portraying the crisis of European civilization both before and after the second World War... He s one of the best novelists alive. --Irving Howe

Language Notes

Text: English, Hebrew (translation) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 270 pages
• Publisher: David R Godine (February 1, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0879237988
• ISBN-13: 978-0879237981
• Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 4.7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.1 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,598,988 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Before And After, May 3, 2001

By 

taking a rest - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Age of Wonders (Paperback)

Mr. Appelfeld writes of life before and after the Holocaust had swept through Austria. "The Age Of Wonders", is the second of his works that appeared in this country following his first, "Badenheim 1939". This work like many that have followed appear to contain elements of Mr. Appelfeld's own remarkable story of survival, when he managed to survive as an 8 year old child his deportation to the labor camp in Transnistria.

The conflict is again explored amongst Jews prior to the war as to those Jews who were, "petit bourgeoisie", non-practicing, "intellectuals", and even a close friend that takes the dramatic step of circumcision as a man well into the middle of his years. The Father of the boy who's story we read is a writer of some renown that believes his Austrian Birth, education, and books published in German separate him from the other Jews he has so much contempt for. His friend that embarks on the mentioned operation is at once both ridiculed by the Father, and then is the object of a frantic effort to prevent him from allowing this act of, "disfigurement", to his person.

The primary Family all have their own issues with their religion, or what it, "should be". The Family deals not only with friends that choose their own way, but even the boys Aunt who he lives with as a child, eventually dies within the walls of a Catholic Monastery.

As he has in his other books the actual Holocaust itself is not written of. There is a single event when they are locked in a Synagogue, are packed onto a train, and then it is 30 years later and the protagonist is now a middle-aged man. Like the Author he has immigrated to Israel but comes home for reasons of his own. This final part of the work is fascinating as the Author brings the man home and it feels as though what he sees and does is real, and also that it may not be happening at all. The last comment is too extreme, for it does happen, it is just that the Author seems to give a transparency, to place a haze between his character and those he encounters, either from his life as a boy, or strangers who have inherited old ideas.

I have read many of Mr. Appelfeld's works and have found them to be some of the best literature on both the pre and post Holocaust experience. His survival was remarkable, it is little less than astonishing that he can not only write of this terrible era in History, but he can share it with all who are interested.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars How assimilated Jews reacted to the holocaust, September 7, 2010

By 

Israel Drazin (Boca Raton, Florida) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Age of Wonders (Quartet Encounters S.) (Paperback)

Two Jewish writers who are holocaust survivors are famous for writing about the holocaust; Elie Wiesel writes in French and Aharon Appelfeld in Hebrew. This novel relates the impressions of a pre-teen Austrian Jewish boy in an assimilated family, a family that refuses to associate with other Jews, in the year when anti-Semitism begins to rage. His father despises Jews and makes all kinds of disparaging remarks about them, even though he is Jewish. The father is a successful and popular writer whose books are rejected when Austria begins to express its anti-Semitism. His publisher stops sending him money and he becomes bankrupt. He falls apart. He blames his situation on Jews. He argues with his wife and separates from her. A priest advises him to leave Austria and go to Palestine, but he refuses, insisting that he is an Austrian and should be treated as one.

The book's title probably refers not only to the boy's wonder, his difficulty in understanding what is happening around him and the reactions of Austrians, both Jews and non-Jews. It probably also refers to the assimilation that the boy sees and his inability to understand why some Jews are trying to save themselves by converting to Christianity, even members of his own family.

Appelfeld does not describe the horrors of the holocaust in this novel because the focus is self-hatred, but there is a scene where the Jews are required by the Nazis to congregate in a synagogue, from where, unknown to them, they will be transported to the camps. The scene is written to reflect the same self-hatred by the assimilated Jews.

The last third of the novel tells about the return of the boy from Jerusalem to the city of his youth some 30 years later. He also had some family problems. He is searching for something that he is unable to find. The city has no Jews, but there are some people with some Jewish ancestry, and the self-hatred is continued long after the holocaust, as does anti-Semitism, even among his father's old friends.

5.0 out of 5 stars Assimilating Austrian Jews before and after the Shoah, January 13, 2007

By 

Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Age of Wonders (Quartet Encounters S.) (Paperback)

Like so many of Appelfeld's novels this book is filled with characters who find their own Jewish identity problematic. His characters do not as far as I know ever have a positive Jewish religious identity. And the religious Jews from Eastern Europe are looked on often with repulsion. This is the case with one of the central characters of the work, the father of the narrator. The father is a well- known Austrian writer whose great success is undermined by those who claim he is a decadent Jew, not a real Austrian. The father is extremely conflicted about his own Jewishness and makes continual criticisms of the Jews he meets. He is a strange character whose hero is Kafka and whose career is at the end broken by anti- Semitic rejections of Austrian publishers.
The narrator of the story the adolescent Bruno tells of his own adventures in this assimilating world. He describes the way it falls apart in the first half of the work. In the second half of the work Bruno returns after the Shoah to the town of his youth. He meets many different characters including half- Jews with a positive if somewhat fantastic relation to their own Jewishness. He also meets one reprehensible convert who has stayed alive by repudiating the Jewish people. He again meets Austrian or half- Jewish women who regret that they have spent their lives with Austrians, and not made lives with kinder, more considerate)(according to them)Jewish husbands.
As is often the case in the novels of Appelfeld there is no decisive conclusive end. The hero by returning has no major revelation or insight or overall philosophical position to develop in relation to what has happened.
The strange silence of the main character, the failure of him really to meditate in depth on those lost gives a puzzling, detached character to this work.
The reader senses Appelfeld is giving us insight into the worlds of these assimilated and assimilating Jews But before the unspeakable he is silent , disturbed and disturbing.