The Conversion: A novel [Paperback]

Aharon Appelfeld (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 14, 1999

Our story opens in an Austrian city, two generations before the Holocaust, where almost all of the Jews have converted to Christianity. Today the church bells are pealing for Karl, an ambitious young civil servant whose conversion will clear his path to a coveted high government post. Karl's future looks bright, but with his promotion comes a political crisis that turns his conversion into a baptism by fire, unexpectedly reuniting Karl with his past and forcing him to take a stand he could never have imagined.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

At the start of Aharon Appelfeld's 12th novel, The Conversion, Karl Hüber has just converted to Christianity. Now in his 30s and never happily identified as a Jew, Karl isn't exactly a true believer in the Christian Trinity either. He has converted only in order to strengthen his chances for promotion within the civil service. The place is Austria, the time pre-World War II. Most of Karl's high-school friends converted long ago; and all through her final illness his mother urged him, "If your career requires you to convert, do it. I won't be angry with you. A person has to advance. Without advancement, there is no purpose or meaning to life." In due course he gets his desired position. But when a proposal to demolish the Jewish shops in the city center comes before the city government, Karl finds himself cast as Defender of the Jews. In fighting for fair compensation for the shopkeepers, he finds himself valuing his people and heritage as he never did before.

Profoundly intertwined with these dramas is the story of his blossoming love for Gloria, an older, Christian-born woman who has lived with his family since he was a boy and she a teenager. Her unofficial but deeply felt conversion to Judaism is to tragically mirror Karl's own hollow abandonment of his faith. In Karl and Gloria's world, as everywhere in Appelfeld's dark fables, the move away from tradition, community, and belief is the first step on a path that will inexorably lead to violence and death. --Daniel Hintzsche --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

In his 13th novel, celebrated Israeli novelist Appelfeld (The Retreat; Badenheim 1939) delivers a haunting tale of moral compromise and spiritual renewal. Some time before WWII, Karl Hubner, petty municipal bureaucrat in a provincial Austrian town, converts from Judaism to Christianity to advance his career. Karl, an ambivalent figure slightly infected with Austria's pervasive anti-Semitism, disdains his parents' religion as outmoded superstition, yet courageously, even recklessly, confronts violent anti-Semites. Several of Karl's Jewish-born former school chums follow the same path for social acceptance: Martin Schmidt, a twice-divorced, embittered alcoholic lawyer; Freddy, a corpulent and idealistic doctor who helps the poor; and Hochhut, a smug, Jew-hating industrialist who ends up bankrupt in a psycho ward. All of them, it is evident, are self-deluded in thinking that they can abandon their Jewish identity in a country where people feel that "a Jew, even after he's been baptized, is still a Jew. He'll always cheat you or betray you." But Karl is also Everyman, his life passing in an anxious haze of unfulfilled dreams, who exemplifies the question of how far one should compromise to survive. Although the Holocaust is never mentioned (nor are years and dates), it is ever-present?and directly prefigured in the tragic finale, when Karl and his former housemaid, Gloria, an observant Jew with whom he is reunited and falls in love, are murdered by anti-Semitic peasants. Appelfeld, who witnessed the murder of his mother by the Nazis when he was eight, and who later escaped from a concentration camp, brings a great sense of moral urgency to this moving novel, which comes to us in a beautiful translation. Editor, Arthur Samuelson.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Schocken (December 14, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805210989
• ISBN-13: 978-0805210989
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.5 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,188,017 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Conversion Does Not Always Mean Change, March 26, 2001

By 

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

This review is from: The Conversion : A Novel (Hardcover)

I have been reading several works by Mr. Aharon Appelfeld. Many of his books relate the stories of Holocaust survivors before, during and after the Genocide. "The Conversion", takes place two generations prior to the Holocaust and addresses the topic the title suggests.

Theologians must debate the concept of conversion on dozens of levels, some as basic as is conversion possible as an absolute. The practice is widespread in the setting of this Austrian City, and the reasons for it are as varied as the people who make the decision. And among the converted there remains a great deal of emotion as to what their own conversion means, why theirs was justifiable and others not. What constitutes a frivolous conversion? Some would say any conversion is so classified, others that convert so as to receive a promotion feel their actions are valid. Some feel safe in their decision if a Parent gave their approval.

Mr. Appelfeld tells a complex tale that is very serious, however he exposes the hypocrisy or perhaps the lunacy that religious conversion creates. A person is denied a high government post because he or she is a Jew. This same person spends a few hours with a Priest, the bells ring, and suddenly this same person is not only considered for the job, but is rewarded with it. Who is more deluded, the person who converts, or the person who accepts them because of their conversion?

As he always does Mr. Appelfeld explores enough layers to show readers how complex a subject he is presenting, and how much more is left to be discussed. Why would a Jew become a Christian and almost immediately become the first in line to defend the people, the group, the traditions he just turned his back upon? One convert makes the transition from allowing a Priest to accept and convert him to Christianity only to see the same person see the Priest as a predator as a short time passes.

All of the writing of Mr. Appelfeld's that I have read is powerful. The end of this work is especially strong as he creates an ending that foretells the future. I don't believe many Authors could have written the ending with credibility much less with the emotion the reader has thrown over them.

I recommend this man's books to anyone. The topics may seem to be those you may have read before; however in every instance of his work even the familiar causes emotions to surface that would just be read without pause in another work. The man is truly a remarkable writer.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Appelfeld is the master, October 25, 2007

By 

Viking from Norway (Oslo, Norway) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Conversion: A novel (Paperback)

Unfortunately the nobel prize has already been given many times to jews who lived true the holocaust, else Appelfeld would have been a clear candidate. Indeed he is a master who should have received it, and he might end up as another example of the best writers never receiving one. In the novel we follow a jew who converts to christianity to climb on the career ladder. The writing is intense, and especially interesting is the perspective this gives on "christian" Europe.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Redemption and Understanding, November 27, 2000

By 

sylvia hougland (dallas, TX USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Conversion: A novel (Paperback)

The Conversion is exquisitely crafted. When the message hits of the overwhelming sense of loss, and the very gradual understanding by the main characters of the hopelessness and unworthiness of "belonging", you can hardly tolerate the pain. Ithits you so hard tha t you don't want it to end like you know it will. Each of his books shows the great trauma and alienation of events unexplainable . All powerful.

Sylvia Seltzer Hougland