The Healer [Hardcover]

Aharon Appelfeld (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 15, 1993

The eighth of Aharon Appelfeld's brilliantly original novels to be published in English, The Healer is a remarkable story about faith and faithlessness among European Jews on the eve of World War II. Felix Katz is a Viennese businessman whose life is choked by suppressed rage and intolerance for those who have faith. When conventional methods fail to cure his daughter's emotional illness, Felix in desperation agrees to travel with his family to the Carpathian Mountains in search of a famous healer. Months later, after being snowbound in a rural Jewish village that sustains itself on faith, Felix returns to a Vienna plagued by the disease of anti-Semitism. The Healer wonderfully combines elements of fable with the complex sensibility of a great modernist writer sensitive to the overbearing moral issues of our time.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Narrated with the ever-expanding significance of a parable and the disarming simplicity of a folk tale, this novel of family life in pre-WW II Vienna by the accomplished Israeli author ( For Every Sin ) explores the complex web of emotions binding Felix, a testy but thriving factory owner; his wife, Henrietta, from whom he feels estranged; and their children. Karl, physically adept, is failing in school; his father denies him the military academy training he desires. Helga, a gifted pianist, develops neurotic symptoms that no doctor--not even "one of Professor Jung's assistants"--can cure. Though no longer practicing Jews, the four make a pilgrimage, for Helga's sake, to a remote Jewish hamlet in the Carpathian Mountains, near Henrietta's ancestral home, to consult an old man reputed to be a healer. There they pass six snowed-in months at a lavish inn. Felix eats and idles, scornful of what he views as quackery. He picks fights and reflects on his empty life while his wife and daughter heed the sage's counsel to pray and study the "bright, holy letters" of Scripture. Felix's efforts to leave the mountain for his beloved city, where anti-Semitism is already rife, bestow a tragic irony on the close of this resonant work.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

The eighth of Appelfeld's novels to be translated into English, this work concerns the futility of denying who we are. Felix Katz is an "assimilated Jew," so when his daughter becomes ill and conventional treatment fails, he only reluctantly agrees to journey with his family from Vienna to the Carpathian Mountains to seek out a holy man, renowned as a healer. The healer's prescription? A prayerbook and the admonition that "the girl must be taught these bright holy letters." While his wife and daughter begin a journey back to their Jewish roots, Felix and his son remain aloof, finally returning to Vienna. Yet for all Felix's attempts to deny his "Jewishness," a policeman on the train home notes that his Jewish name is "annoying." It is a hint of what awaits--a Holocaust that cares little about faithfulness or faithlessness, only names. As is typical of Appelfeld's work, much is left unstated. Essential for most libraries.
- David W. Henderson, Eckerd Coll. Lib., St. Petersburg, Fla.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Random House Value Publishing (August 15, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0517110164
• ISBN-13: 978-0517110164
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Compendium, April 19, 2001

By 

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

This review is from: The Healer (Appelfeld, Aharon) (Paperback)

I have now read a good portion of this Author's novels, and while not qualified to comment on them from a theological perspective, I continue to find his work some of the finest writing on individuals or on Humanity that I have read.

Mr. Appelfeld's novel, "The Healer", contains elements that I feel were greatly expanded upon in his other works. His books, "Unto The Soul", "To The Land Of The Cattails", and "The Conversion", all came to mind during my reading. These elements were similar but not repetitive, the Author was at times giving an alternative perspective on an issue that he examined from a different viewpoint before. If you have read the other works I mention you will feel a familiarity with the circumstances and issues he deals with here.

This is not a post Holocaust Novel rather it is more akin to, "To The Land Of The Cattails" in time. Religion plays a central role as it always does and here he again is dealing with regret and guilt with several characters. This time it is not as clearly portrayed as a conversion, or a total void where faith would normally reside. The Father in the story is constantly examining what he could have done, and how those results would have allowed him to change the present. The character ruminates on the type of Jew he was as a scholar and the effects it had upon his life. This is a man who has no use for religion, or who buries his remorse for abandoning it well.

Religion splits the Family when the Wife and Daughter seek to become what they have shunned. They travel to the, "Healer", in a remote isolated locale in search of faith or perhaps what they hope faith will gain them. This spilt amongst Family members becomes much more than theological, and Mr. Appelfeld brings the complexity of his characters to the reader without making the issues clear for a simpleton, he never stoops, rather he pays tribute to his readers.

The bulk of the story takes place on an isolated mountain, and inside an inn, however as the story is brought to a close the journey the Father takes progresses, and the events that journey foreshadows with little subtlety, is as powerful as any of the other works of his I have read.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The lesser work of a modern master, January 14, 2007

By 

Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Healer (Appelfeld, Aharon) (Paperback)

Once again we have an Appelfeld- like family with the father skeptical of religion, a hardheaded businessman, and the mother more sympathetic to Jewish tradition. Once again we have the division within the family which persists throughout. The parents and their children the athletic Karl and the emotionally disturbed Helga travel deep into the Carpathian Mountains. There they meet a 'Healer' a holy teacher who instructs Helga in the ways of prayer. As is often the case in the work of Appelfeld there is no dramatic decisive ending to all this, no ' cure'. Rather there is a situation of ongoing tension in which Jewish self- critiism and self- hatred in a largely anti-Semitic society play a large part.
I did not find this particular novel to be among Appelfeld's most gripping. But it nonetheless once again reveals some of the major themes and preoccupations of a modern master.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Left wanting more, November 9, 2006

By 

B. Andresen (Eureka , CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Healer (Appelfeld, Aharon) (Paperback)

This book had potential but it really left me wanting some gaps filled in.