In Babylon: A Novel [Paperback]

Marcel Moring (Author), Stacey Knecht (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 22, 2000

The worst winter blizzard the East Netherlands has seen in many years has left Nathan Hollander and his niece, Nina, snowbound in the deserted house of his late Uncle Herman. But they are not alone: Apart from Chaim and Magnus, two seventeenth-century family ghosts, there is another presence, unknown and unfriendly. As they wait for the storm to subside, Nathan and Nina piece together the story of their forefathers, a family of itinerant Jewish clockmakers who came to the Netherlands from Eastern Europe, and then fled to America in 1939. An extraordinary family history emerges, as well as many unsolved mysteries: For instance, what happened to the brilliant Zeno, who became a leader of a messianic sect and then vanished without a trace; why did Uncle Herman, a respected academic, end up dying in such undignified circumstances -- underneath an eighteen-year-old call girl?

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The arc of this grand, engrossing novel spans four centuries and two continents. Trapped by "the winter to end all winters" in an isolated house in the country, Nathan Hollander, a 60-year-old Dutch fairy-tale writer, and his niece, Nina, the last of the Hollanders, delve deep into their family history. In order to claim the house, left to him by his uncle Herman, a famed sociologist who died in the arms of a prostitute, Nathan was required to compose a biography of the dedeased; now that the project is nearly complete, Nathan has "allowed" himself to revisit the home where he spent much of his youth. After arriving in a ferocious snowstorm, Nathan and Nina must combat not only the fierce cold but also the mysterious work of some hostile force. To relieve the grimness of their plight, Nathan shares Herman's biography--which he describes as "more of a family chronicle"--with Nina, so she can learn the history of the clan from which she was long estranged. As the two uncover the house's mysteries, Nina learns of Chaim and Magnus, ancestral ghosts who have visited Nathan for 50 years; of the family profession: clock making; of their migration from Poland to Holland in the 17th century, where they took on their adopted country's name; of their flight to America during WWII and their return to Holland; of Nathan's brother and Nina's father, Zeno, a "20th-century prophet" who disappeared 30 years earlier. Moring's prose is fluid and erudite, and the transitions between the many eras masterfully achieved; only occasionally does the narrative linger too long in the past or a philosophical discussion (sometimes related via a fairy tale) impede the flow of the text. As historically instructive as it is suspenseful, this is an impressive, accomplished tale of a perennially uprooted family and its last remaining members seeking their home in an inhospitable world. (Apr.) FYI: M?ring is a bestseller in the Netherlands, where this book was first published in 1997.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

The death (by call girl) of 80-year-old scholar Herman Hollander brings together Nathan Hollander and his niece Nina to muse upon the family's tangled history as clockmakers and eventually refugees of 1940s Eastern Europe. Not your traditional "making it in America" story, this ambitious novel refracts its themes of displacement and regret through the characters of Herman and his brother Emmanuel, witnesses to the development of the atomic bomb, and Zeno, a child prodigy turned underground cult leader. Also thrown into the mix are portraits of the Hollanders' family life, courtships, and ancestral visitations, bookended by a freak snowstorm confining Nathan and Nina to Uncle Herman's mansion and setting these tales in motion. M ring's story wears its "epic" garments lightly, with many appealing personalities and much humorous dialog nicely captured through Knecht's translation, but there's too much territory to be covered, and the reader will be left wondering how exactly all of this ties together. An imperfect but amiable enough novel that was a great success in the author's native Holland. For larger libraries.
---Marc A. Kloszewski, Indiana Free Lib., PA
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 432 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow; 1 edition (March 22, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0688176453
• ISBN-13: 978-0688176457
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.7 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,362,792 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars rich stories of life without a home, March 6, 2001

By 

"listen-in-the-wind" (kirkland, wa USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: In Babylon: A Novel (Paperback)

The poet Muriel Rukeyser said "the universe is composed of stories - not atoms", and you can't escape that with this book. "In Babylon" is filled with stories pulling you along, stories strung together in an unconvential way, the effect more like a densely woven mat than a pretty necklace.

The theme is announced right on the dedication page: "Trees have roots. Jews have legs." Möring's protagonist, writer of fairy tales Nathan Hollander, tells the story of his family, Jews, always on the way, traveling West. It begins with the clockmaker Magnus Levie, from the area bordering Poland and Lithuania, who starts his trek to the West in 1648, after finding the house of his uncle Chaim burned down by Cossacks, his uncle presumably murdered. After twenty years of wandering he shows up in Holland, in what is its prosperous Golden Age, and finds a welcome there and a place to settle, and he assumes the name Hollander. The trek West is then interrupted for eight generations, all clockmakers in Rotterdam, physicists, engineers. Holland, poignantly characterized as the land of milk and butter, with its biblical echoes of "land overflowing of milk and honey", is almost the promised land, but not quite.

In 1939 Nathan's dad, mom and uncle Herman set ship to America, to escape Hitler and the "Teutonic hordes", without being able to convince their parents to come with them. What I admire in Möring's account of this history is that there is no trace of any attempt to evoke compassion, instead he leaves you with complete respect for how each of these people dealt with the circumstances they found themselves in.

What I consider to be the weakest part of the book is the backbone story, the story in which all the other stories find their connection. What will happen with Nathan and Nina, who find themselves stuck in an unusually severe winter in a remote house without heat, who need to keep alive by hacking antique furniture to pieces and burning it? Who had previously stacked that furniture tightly in the staircase well, and why? As the mystery that needs to pull you along suffiently to get you to read all the other stories it doesn't work very well - fortunately those other stories are strong enough and cohesive enough to do just fine without needing this central mystery.

Nathan has trouble settling anywhere, and to trust others. Möring draws this sharply and contrasts it with the life of Magnus who after his wanderings of twenty years is able to find a home in the world. Will Nathan eventually succeed in this too? Can he overcome his distrust? That is the central tension that keeps him going.

Nathan explains his personal inability to grow roots from the history of his family or that of Jews in general - and this is what keeps his inability in place. How Möring himself sees this is less clear to me.

Well worth reading, if only for his portrayal of Holland by a deliberate outsider. Dutch expatriates, like me, will be able to identify with that very well. And for a flavor of a history of ordinary Jews in a strange world, both bizarre and moving, Möring is an expert cook.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars well-written, well-translated, strange..., January 18, 2001

By 

R. Baker (Athens, GA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: In Babylon: A Novel (Paperback)

I'm perplexed by my own reaction to this book. I confess that I didn't find the story particularly compelling. The minor mystery that is the glue binding together lots of narrative time-travel is treated as just that: minor, and I had a hard time becoming overly concerned with what was at the bottom of the apparent plot to very carefully NOT kill Nathan Hollander. I also had a very difficult time sympathizing with any of the characters, major or minor. Usually this is true because of poor character development; in this case, the characters are developed well, but I just don't particularly care for them. (Which isn't to say that Nathan is an anti-hero. He's not troubling enough for that.)

So, then, why do I care enough to give a positive review? First, the writing is extraordinary, and this English translation left me breathless at times. It can be difficult to say that about a translation, but Stacey Knecht either took a great number of liberties, worked closely with Moring, or is absolutely brilliant. Regardless, the writing was appropriate, idiomatic, and comfortable. Without resorting to Nabokovian over-description, Moring communicates sense of place and time (several places and times, really). It reminds me of the stripped-down prose of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich in that regard. I felt the cold and craved the tobacco without having it force-fed to me.

Back to the "problems" I note at the beginning of this review. I'm not sure they are problems. Sometimes when I have trouble with a book is this well executed, I have to suspect the shortcoming is on my end, that perhaps I'm missing the literary or thematic nuances. And so it is with In Babylon. I think I'll give it a second read to see what I was misunderstanding. It's certainly worth a first read for anyone.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very orginal strange story that will haunt you for weeks..., October 31, 2000

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Amazon Reviewer (Home) - See all my reviews

This review is from: In Babylon: A Novel (Paperback)

The story begins when Nathan Hollander and his niece Nina go to visit the house he has just inherited from an uncle. As they arrive, it starts snowing, but what is to come is more than just a little snow. They enter the house and find most of the house to be stacked with furniture, the entrance to most of the house is blocked. Meanwhile, the snowstorm outside gets worse, and before they know it, it's too late to leave, they are snowed in. Trying to make the best of their misfortune, they search those parts of the house they can still enter for food, and to their amazement, they find large amounts of food in the basement. But who put that food there? The dates show it cannot have been sticked more than 6 months ago, when their uncle has been dead for a much longer time. As the temperature keeps falling, Nathan and Nina start burning the furniture to keep warm, while Nathan, a fantastic storyteller, starts telling his niece the history of their family of clockmakers. What do they discover as they clear their path further into the house and go back and forth between history and present, and what is wrong with this house?

Marcel Moring has an intriguing way of storytelling, which he shows through Nathan as well. This book becomes stranger and creepier as you get along, and it will leave you thinking about the story and further discovering how odd it was weeks after you finish it. The book has quite a number of pages, and there's a lot to think about, so take your time to read it, but I promise you won't regret reading In Babylon.