From Publishers Weekly
Starting with the epigraph "Humor is but an amiable form of despair," Furst narrates in buoyant episodes the story of his life prior to emigrating to the United States. The result is an autobiographical novel of exceptional power. Journalist, Jew and part of prewar Western Europe's coffeehouse intelligentsia, Furst opts out of Hitler's Germany in 1934, going first to Madrid and Vienna, then fleeing Europe altogether with his Viennese bride, Gretl, who plays Sancho to his Quixote. They sail to the Caribbean but, as refugees, are turned away at every port. In Santo Domingo, where they have been offered employment on a farm, their benefactors turn out to be opportunists who have refugees do what no one else will: clean pigsties, poison rats, collect debts at gunpoint. From all this the Fursts exit laughing, but in time the laughter turns hollow, revealing a crueler form of despair. Exile means detachment?from country, history, loved ones, self?and this detachment here breeds an exultant wit. Peter and Gretl are blithe amid adversity, debonair in defeat. Yet behind the gaiety there is a growing sense of loss?the loss of hopeful love, of the Europe Gretl represents and, though unmentioned, of the Jews who stayed behind. This is a brilliant, funny, unsentimental, deeply ironic work.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
This "autobiographical novel" appears to be far more autobiography than novel, but in either case it is a compelling story. Furst, who now lives in California, was a young sportswriter for a Berlin newspaper in the early 1930s who also happened to be Jewish. While in Monte Carlo to report on an automobile race, the narrator realizes that it could be unsafe to return to Germany, so he travels instead to Spain to cover the Spanish Civil War. His odyssey takes him to Austria, where he manages to escape the German occupation and even to return and smuggle out his girlfriend. They move on to Prague and to Paris, just one step ahead of the Nazi conquest, and eventually end up in the Dominican Republic. The harrowing flight and narrow escapes make for fascinating reading. Recommended for medium to large academic and public libraries, and essential for Judaica, Holocaust, and World War II collections.?Jim Dwyer, California State Univ. Lib., Chico
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
