The Five: A Novel Of Jewish Life In Turn-of-the-century Odessa (Paperback)

by Vladimir Jabotinsky (Author), Michael R. Katz (Translator), Michael Stanislawski (Introduction) "The first time I saw Madame Milgrom and her elder daughter was at the premiere of the opera Monna Vanna in our municipal theater..." (more)
Key Phrases: little snail, external students, Anna Mikhailovna, Abram Moiseevich, Ignats Albertovich (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist
*Starred Review* This autobiographical novel was first published in Russian in Paris in 1936. Set in the Odessa of the author's youth and narrated by a character much like himself, it recounts the fortunes of a Jewish family, the Milgroms, through whom we witness the rise and fall of Jewish Odessa from the beginning of the twentieth century to the Russian Revolution. It also offers a fervent account of the temporary success and ultimate failure of Jewish assimilation in the Russian empire. (Jabotinsky was born into an assimilated middle-class Jewish family in Odessa in 1880; he left in 1898 to become a foreign correspondent for a Russian newspaper in Italy and later in Switzerland.) The Five portrays the lost world of Odessa's Jews in all its color and vitality, its historical vulnerability and perennial optimism; now appearing in English, it is bound to become indispensable for American literary fiction readers and students of Jewish-Russian literature. George Cohen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Description
"The beginning of this tale of bygone days in Odessa dates to the dawn of the twentieth century. At that time we used to refer to the first years of this period as the ‘springtime,’ meaning a social and political awakening. For my generation, these years also coincided with our own personal springtime, in the sense that we were all in our youthful twenties. And both of these springtimes, as well as the image of our carefree Black Sea capital with acacias growing along its steep banks, are interwoven in my memory with the story of one family in which there were five children: Marusya, Marko, Lika, Serezha, and Torik."—from The Five

The Five is an captivating novel of the decadent fin-de-siècle written by Vladimir Jabotinsky (1880–1940), a controversial leader in the Zionist movement whose literary talents, until now, have largely gone unrecognized by Western readers. The author deftly paints a picture of Russia’s decay and decline—a world permeated with sexuality, mystery, and intrigue. Michael R. Katz has crafted the first English-language translation of this important novel, which was written in Russian in 1935 and published a year later in Paris under the title Pyatero.

The book is Jabotinsky’s elegaic paean to the Odessa of his youth, a place that no longer exists. It tells the story of an upper-middle-class Jewish family, the Milgroms, at the turn of the century. It follows five siblings as they change, mature, and come to accept their places in a rapidly evolving world. With flashes of humor, Jabotinsky captures the ferment of the time as reflected in political, social, artistic, and spiritual developments. He depicts with nostalgia the excitement of life in old Odessa and comments poignantly on the failure of the dream of Jewish assimilation within the Russian empire. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Cornell University Press (April 14, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0801489032
• ISBN-13: 978-0801489037
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #599,635 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Fiddler on the Roof" without the sugar-coating, May 2, 2006

By	Joshua Garren (Newton, MA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is a passionate novel in the Grand Russian tradition, which would make Pasternak proud. It not only brings to life the pre-revolutionary era in Russia, but is also an window on the current Russian psyche. (As a frequent traveler to Russia, I was amazed by the number of conversations from the book which could have been lifted directly out of my life. Russia - in truth - does not change much). As a picture of a foreign world in turmoil, it is fascinating.

While a great read for any fan of the historical novel, "the Five" it is simply a must-read for anyone interested in Zionist history and for anyone concerned for the future of the Jewish people.

The characters presage the story of "Fiddler on the Roof," with the different children meeting different, stereotyped fates. But they are dealt with here with seriousness and respect which is completely absent from those later characters.

Finally, "the Five" provides a fascinating insight into the mind of one of the founders of the Jewish State. Jabotinsky was by no means a radical (except insofar as imagining a Jewish state before its inception might have been considered radical) and he is by no means a right-wing extremist (except insofar as disagreeing with the Communist mainstream of the Kibbutz movement could be construed as being right wing). He was certainly a veritable communist when compared to what passes for the Democratic Party in the U.S. today.

The goal here is not to entertain but to challenge. If you can find it, buy it in hardcover so that it will be around for your children to read.

1 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Jabo: Keep your Day Job, March 5, 2006

By	Mark Seifter "Marcus" (Trumbauerville, PA) - See all my reviews

I assume that for one to properly appreciate this roman a clef memoir about pre-revolutionary Odessa, and its contemporary atmosphere of Russian-Jewish asimilation, "you have had to be there". But, of course, no one still alive can remember those years of pre-Bolshevik Odessa.
Yet, despite much of the all-acclaiming academic-critcal puffery on this book's back cover, I can only regard it as a juvenile effort by someone who should not have quit his day job for that of a writer. (Z'ev Jabotinsky's day job being that of an extremist Zionist firebrand, who nearly singlehandedly divided the Zionist movement against itself, alienated its erstwhile patron Great Britain, built up a goon squad of likeminded sqadristi inside Palestine (the Irgun), and a Hitlerjugend outside Palestine (the Betar), and generally infected Zionism with neo-fascist aspirations of territorial aggrandizement that it has yet to relinquish.)
The novel concerns Jabotinsky's memoir of the first years of twentieth century Odessa. His narrator, a Jewish-born journalist who works for an Odessan newspaper, but has traveled abroad extensively, both for pleasure and as part of his work.(in effect young jabotinsky, before his conversion to Zionism) This young man comes across a unique Jewish family at the opera,(along with the correct usage of the Russian langiuage, one of the narrator's/Jabotinsky's early passions) the Milgroms, and he quickly falls under their spell. In particular, he falls under the spell of the five children, and of these five, he falls hopelessly infatuated with the elder daughter, Marusya.
In brief, the narrator gets to know this little family, all unique personalities, yet who reveal themselves to be, in Jabo's hands, mere caricatures of this or that phenomenon of Jewish existence in pre-revolutionary Russia. Ignats Albertovich, the father, is a leading Odessan grain-dealer, and passes his freee time reading nineteenthy century German revolutionary-Enlightenment literature, harking to a day of hopeful (yet vain) German gentile-Jewish accomodation. Anna Mikhailovna, the mother, is a gracious hostess right out of Russian literature, who apparently has little function other than to sit on her children like some glorified mother hen, exposing them to the best of Russian culture, educating them in Russian schools, and hoping to marry them to Russians. The five Milgrom children are equally caricatures, rather than being well-rounded, realistic figures. Marko is a fool who races after this or that passion in which he becomes momentarily enamored, only to reject it after a moment for a new passion. Serezha, his brother, respects nothing in life; he is a daredevil and ne'er do-well, eager to challenge every law and moral restriction, while he keeps up a lively and sustained acquaintance with the local Jewish and gentile demi-monde. His younger brother Torik has committed himself to integrating himself into Russian society and economy; he is as correct, as punctilious, as seriuous and as methodical as he needs to be in prefecting his escape from his family into Russia. The two sisters are caricatures too: Lika is a cold-blooded revolutionary, utterly committed to nothing save the revolution, sort of a mixture of Dostoevsky's "Devils" and Stalin's own thugs. And Marusya, who despite the author's/narrator's glorification from beginning to end of the book, reveals herself to be merely a flirt and an airhead. Her "job" is to dispense joy to all of humanity.
Marusya lives, in short, a pointless, though cossetted, life, and dies a pointless death. The narrator is her little trained monkey-confidant, and he revels in the little sexless love she offers him as the most he will have from her, while she prepares herself to marry a Russian sailor, who in the end leaves her (or does she leave him? No matter) so that she can marry her dolt of a cousin, Samoilo Kozodoi, a local pharmacist. She dies, again, pointlessly, being burned to death in her kitchen. Her siblings all suffer equivalently horrible demises; although Lika and Torik and Serezha live on, they are lost to their family nest, as they are lost to Judaism and Jewry. (Lika is consumed in the Revolution; Serezha is blinded; Torik converts to Christianity)
In short, the book is a melange of caricatures, all of whom are either vaguely, incompletely, impressionistically drawn, or just simply nauseating. The little ascetic, sexless love tale (of Marusya with the narrator, and Marusya with her Russian sailor and then with her pharmacist husband) is badly stitched onto Jabotinsky's ideological message, and I resented his narrator's constant stage managing the narrative, just so his little tale might be told. Jabotinsky's contemporary Babel writes much richer, more ambiguous and satisfying literature, and it is deeply unfortunate that Jabotinsky didn't learn more how to write from babel and his fellow contemporaries in Russian-Jewish literature, as it is that the erstwhile ideological fame of this author himself has gone on to cast ill-deserved fame on a clearly juvenile work.