Almost before he knows it, Herman Broder, refugee and survivor of World War II, has three wives: Yadwiga, the Polish peasant who hid him from the Nazis; Masha , his beautiful and neurotic true love; and Tamara, his first wife, miraculously returned from the dead. Astonished by each new complication, and yet resigned to a life of evasion, Herman navigates a crowded, Yiddish New York with a sense of perpetually impending doom.
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"One is forever suspended between laughter and tears by this rich and marvelous novel."--Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York Times
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Text: English, Yiddish (translation)
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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56 of 56 people found the following review helpful
By Paul McGrath
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Imagine being a Jew in Brooklyn, NY in 1949. Just about everyone you know has been through the Nazi camps. Just about everyone you know has lost husbands, wives, children, mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, and sometimes all of the above. Just about everyone you know has survived years of awful, humiliating, degrading and terrifying experiences. How would you cope? How would you maintain your faith in God? How would you begin--not to mention maintain--a relationship based on love, one with hope for the future and the dream of children?
This is the story of Herman Broder, a fortyish Polish expatriate. He was not a survivor of the camps. Instead, he escaped them by spending three years in a barn owned by the mother of his illiterate peasant servant, Yadwiga, who hid and fed him. In helpless gratitude, and for no other reason, he married her after the war so that she could come to the U. S.
Herman also has a mistress, Masha. Masha is married but is separated from her husband. Masha spent years in the camps. She is very beautiful. She smokes incessantly, speaks rapidly, is a bundle of nervous energy and she can't sleep. "If I do . . . then I'm back with them immediately. They're dragging me, beating me, chasing me. They come running from all sides, like hounds after a hare." She lives in a cramped apartment with her mother whom she loves but whose strictly orthodox ways are a reminder to her every day of her wayward current life . . . and possibly also the life she led in the camps from which she escaped.
Herman ekes out a living by ghost-writing for a showy rabbi, but tells Yadwiga that he sells books out of town so he can stay with Masha for days at a time. He doesn't want anyone else to know that he works for the rabbi and doesn't want the rabbi to know where he lives. His life is a complex weave of lies and cover-ups, stories and duplicity, and into the middle of it comes his wife from Poland, Tamara, whom he had thought to be dead these many years. She has also survived the camps. "We sawed logs in the forest--twelve and fourteen hours a day. At night it as so cold I couldn't sleep at all. It stank so, I couldn't breathe. Many of the people suffered from beriberi. One minute a person would be talking to you, making plans, and suddenly he would be silent. You spoke to him and he didn't answer. You moved closer and saw that he was dead."
It turns out that Herman wasn't such a great husband before the war. It turns out that he abandoned his wife and his two children for another woman. It turns out that his children did not survive the camps. Imagine this.
Herman is a mass of indecisiveness. He can not say no to anybody. He can not believe in God but finds he can not abandon him. He can not practice his religion but can not leave those who do. He can not plan for the future because he can not believe there will be one. He can not leave Yadwiga but he can not love her. He can not meet Masha's expectations but is helplessly in love with her. He feels he must do right by Tamara but finds that he is physically, mentally, legally and emotionally incapable of doing so.
He is a clown; a sad clown; a forlorn, likable, exasperating clown, stumbling from one comical misadventure to the next, complicating his life further with every effort he makes to simplify it. He lives in a world in which no one can bear to confront the truth; a world in which the truth is simply a philosophical conceit which is as likely as anything else to cause pain.
His story is told in a very straightforward style by his creator, Mr. Singer, who is a careful and deliberate observer, but who never passes judgment, expresses opinion, or provides explanation. His characters are sharply defined. Their conversations are loaded with meaning, and sometimes that which is not said speaks more loudly than that which is. It is a humorous tale that is also sad and poignant and true. It is a remarkable piece of work, a brilliant piece of work, and it stands as a testament to the survivors and victims of the Holocaust.
22 of 23 people found the following review helpful
By Bruce Hutton
Format:Paperback
Isaac Bashevis Singer was an idea novelist, in the way that Turgenev was. He fashioned his plots and characters around the questions he wanted to explore, and never let them get out of his control. But, like Turgenev, Singer was a great writer and never let his characters and plots become secondary. His writing is always entertaining as well as enlightening. Enemies, A Love Story is a case in point.
Herman Broder is a Jewish man living in New York City in the late 1940's, having survived the Holocaust in Poland hiding from the Nazis. Now the war is over, but Herman is no more at liberty than he was then. Believing his first wife died in a concentration camp, Herman has married again; he also has a mistress; to both women he lies about his work, and to his boss he lies about his women. Then his first wife shows up alive, and now he has to lie to her too. Herman is always on the verge of running, he must relentlessly cover his tracks in case he has to escape again. This sounds like a comedy of errors, and Singer finds the humor in Herman's plight, but he never loses sight of the tragedy which produced Herman's obsession with escape. This is a man so damaged that he can't really live anymore, and that's the question Singer is exploring with Enemies: is it possible to be whole again after going through the Holocaust? And if not, is it possible to live with the pieces that are left? Consider Vladek Spiegelman in Art Spiegelman's Maus, also a Holocaust survivor who only made it through sheer luck and a relentless hoarding and parceling out of otherwise mundane and unimportant items; now, though he's wealthy and free to do as he pleases, he can't stop hoarding, just in case.
Singer is asking, are the Jews who lived through Hitler's final solution dead, in their own way, like the victims who went into the ovens? What is there to do when you've lived through the unthinkable, and when so many people didn't? Enemies, A Love Story is a brilliant novel that grabs you by the mind as well as the heart.
Herman Broder is a Jewish man living in New York City in the late 1940's, having survived the Holocaust in Poland hiding from the Nazis. Now the war is over, but Herman is no more at liberty than he was then. Believing his first wife died in a concentration camp, Herman has married again; he also has a mistress; to both women he lies about his work, and to his boss he lies about his women. Then his first wife shows up alive, and now he has to lie to her too. Herman is always on the verge of running, he must relentlessly cover his tracks in case he has to escape again. This sounds like a comedy of errors, and Singer finds the humor in Herman's plight, but he never loses sight of the tragedy which produced Herman's obsession with escape. This is a man so damaged that he can't really live anymore, and that's the question Singer is exploring with Enemies: is it possible to be whole again after going through the Holocaust? And if not, is it possible to live with the pieces that are left? Consider Vladek Spiegelman in Art Spiegelman's Maus, also a Holocaust survivor who only made it through sheer luck and a relentless hoarding and parceling out of otherwise mundane and unimportant items; now, though he's wealthy and free to do as he pleases, he can't stop hoarding, just in case.
Singer is asking, are the Jews who lived through Hitler's final solution dead, in their own way, like the victims who went into the ovens? What is there to do when you've lived through the unthinkable, and when so many people didn't? Enemies, A Love Story is a brilliant novel that grabs you by the mind as well as the heart.
16 of 17 people found the following review helpful
By Brent Mann
Format:Paperback
Singer's ear for the way people really spoke was impeccable, and his gifts in this area are on display beautifully in "Enemies." The dialogue in this book is unmatched in fiction.
By the way, it's funny, sad and ironic that Amazon visitors have written exactly two reviews of "Enemies," while several hundred have been written about "The Bridges of Madison County." I believe that Singer himself would just smile at this fact.
Final thought: Read this book. It's one of the ten best novels of all time.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
So much wisdom in every page!
I'm still reading this story. I want to take my time and savor it, and not wolf it down like a slice of chocolate cake only to wonder, "Did I finish it already?! Read more
Published 8 months ago by nancy
4.0 out of 5 stars
moving story
I found this to be one of Singer's most compelling works. The narrative is compelling and inspiring in its originality.
Published 14 months ago by Diego Morandi
5.0 out of 5 stars
What makes us human
I saw the movie version of "Enemies" years ago and enjoyed it immensely. The visual from the film that sticks in my mind is the protagonist, Herman Broder, looking up at a sign in... Read more
Published 18 months ago by Ed Brodow
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Perfect Mix of Humor and Heartbreak
The story was that of a man who'd survived the holocaust in Poland. Believing that his wife had been killed, he eventually emigrated to New York and married a Polish woman, who'd... Read more
Published 20 months ago by AgnesMack
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great Novel
This book arrived in excellent condition. I read it in a couple of days because frankly, it was so interesting that I hated to put it down. Read more
Published on September 25, 2010 by Natalie Erber
5.0 out of 5 stars
The funniest book about hopelessness that you will read
Herman Broder has a habit of analyzing his life and placing it in to a larger and unworkable context to justify his misery. Read more
Published on October 10, 2009 by cassdog
5.0 out of 5 stars
Enemies, a love story
It is the first book by Isaac Singer I read and it won't be the last. A wonderful tale about the strengths and weaknesses of the human heart and mind masterfully written.
Published on June 26, 2009 by Sylvie Derrien
4.0 out of 5 stars
Everything Jewish
New York after the Jewish Holocaust in Europe. Herman Broder lives a frantic life between 2 wives, and soon to be three. He writes books for a rabbi. Read more
Published on March 14, 2008 by Quilmiense
4.0 out of 5 stars
here is my review on this
In New York
The hotel staff
gave me the chair
that
Isaac B Singer
used to
lean his back against
years... Read more
The hotel staff
gave me the chair
that
Isaac B Singer
used to
lean his back against
years... Read more
Published on March 25, 2007 by Karlo Barbaric
5.0 out of 5 stars
My first book by Singer and surely not the last......
Isaac Bashevis Singer writes a novel of sheer absurdity and yet, page by page, he makes it very believable. Read more
Published on January 1, 2007 by Brian Kerecz
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