Customer Reviews

The Black Brothers

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This long-forgotten masterpiece of Lisa Tetzner (originally entitled in German as "Die Schwarzen Bruder" and later became better known as gFratelli Nerih) published sometime in the 50's deserves a place among the successors of Victor Hugo's "Les Miserables" as one of the finest masterpieces of humanism, in spite of its relative brevity. I became acquainted with this rare literary work some 7 or 8 years way back in high school when I first succumbed to its profound and realistic description of suffering and struggle through the eyes of the young. Tetzner vividly depicts life in mid-19th century Milan, where young men from impoverished families in the countryside are sold for contractual work as chimney sweepers in what was then a dangerous city, teeming with rogues and cutthroats.
It tells the story of a boy's journey from his village to the place of his destination where he is to work for a specific period of time. Along the way, he meets others of his kind and then begins their odyssey to a life of hard and often unrewarding forced labor, starvation, deprivation, oppression c the list of what awaits these fragile beings is endless, and one way to cope with their inevitable situation is to band together for survival and mutual benefit, thus came into being the "fratelli neri" (black brothers). Together they intend to help each other overcome oppression, wholesale physical and spiritual torment c even death itself.
It came together both as a surprise and a relief that at last, the first ever authoritative English translation of this long-forgotten novel will bring back to life what may be called an "unknown classic". For the first time, the majority of the English-speaking readers will have access to this novel. Even my knowledge of this literary piece is accidental, as narrated by an acquaintance with whom I luckily bumped with in the library. The old 8vo volume in German he always read caught my curiosity and I prevailed upon him to narrate it to me in English as my command of the language is very poor. Although I became acquainted with the contents only in a rushed English rendition (and no doubt abridged for convenience), it became one of my favorites of all time, and I never forgot it since then. Its melodramatic tinge didn't made me feel sissy and annoyed, and as I'm no lover of mills & boons and nonsense melodramatic themes, I'll gladly give this book 5 stars even before I read this first-ever English translation! Well, that is for the simple reason that it continues to fascinate even when the story is sad or in other words, it never ceases to stimulate the mind even as it touches the emotions.

I had the opportunity to read this book when i was 13 years old and
it remains one of my favorites now that i am 33...but i read a full version and even though i enjoy the artwork on this edition i think it loses much of the original story....for what i can tell about 30% of the original story is gone....still a wonderfull read for kids and adults alike.

Black and white graphic novels are not typical publications for teens, but Lisa Tetzner's The Black Brothers will surprise you: it most definitely is for this younger audience, revolving around the story of 13-year-old Giorgio who is sold to a chimney sweep in the city by a desperately poor father. Giorgio has a secret society and a survival plan in this historical story of the 19th century, when poor farmers sold their children across the Swiss-Italian border to work as sweeps.