Life With a Star [Hardcover]

Jiri Weil (Author), R. Klima (Translator), Philip Roth (Preface)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 1989

Weil based this novel on his experiences hiding from the Nazis in Czechoslovakia in order to avoid the concentration camps. In recommending the book to FSG for translation into English, Philip Roth wrote: "I think that the book is, without a doubt, one of the outstanding novels I've read about the fate of a Jew and the Jews under the Nazis. I don't really know of one quite like it."

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This slim, wartime classic was written in the mid-1940s when the author's experiences during the Holocaust were still fresh; the "star" of the title refers of course to the Star of David European Jews under Hitler were forced to wear. It opens as the narrator, a former bank teller named Josef Roubicek, is waiting to be called up for deportation to Terezin, the notorious concentration camp in eastern Czechoslovakia. Instead, he is given a "classification four"--unsuited to hard labor--and is assigned by the authorities to sweep leaves in a Prague cemetery. Here, Roubicek begins a surreal existence as the author contrasts the peacefulness of the cemetery with the increasing persecution of the Jews still left in the city. A weak, vacillating character at the start of the narrative, Roubicek matures. Unlike many friends who contemplate suicide, he decides to embrace hope--and life--and with the help of a resistance fighter goes underground. Weil (1900-1959) builds his drama through a series of telling vignettes; in one pathetic scene a doll cries "Mama" as toys of Jewish children are carted off to a warehouse. Powerful, yet small in scope, this is as much an indictment of materialism--and greed--as it is a chilling portrait of Nazi-occupied Prague. In the preface, Roth explains how he was made aware of this "outstanding" book. He was in strumental in its publication here.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

In Nazi-occupied Prague, Jews live as outcasts, awaiting the dreaded summons to the concentration camps. Identified with the Star of David, they cannot use a streetcar or buy meat; their property and their jobs have been taken away. A timid, sickly bank clerk named Roubicek records how these humiliating measures and the proximity of death affect him and those around him. As he observes others meekly submitting to the deportation orders, he gradually resolves to rebel and goes into hiding with the help of a sympathetic Czech. Narrated in simple, matter-of-fact style, this affecting novel--based on the author's own experiences and first published in 1949--is a powerful testimony to the Holocaust.
- Marie Bednar, Pennsylvania State Univ. Libs., University Park
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (June 1, 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374187371
• ISBN-13: 978-0374187378
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,542,434 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #92 in Books > Literature & Fiction > World Literature > Slavic

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars You'll Understand..., November 24, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Life with a Star (Jewish Lives) (Paperback)

I read 'Night' by Elie Wiesel, and although I sensed the horror of the Holocaust, I didn't actually feel it. Some time later I read 'Life with a Star', and finally felt it, deep inside. This book is an incredible description of a Jew's life outside the camps during the war. I highly recommend it.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Incredibly moving in a subtle way. Read it., September 30, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Life with a Star (Jewish Lives) (Paperback)

Why this gem has not received the recognition it deserves in the publishing world is impossible to understand. Now available in America; finally. An important testament to the Houlocaust, and, in a larger sense, to humanity... to hope... Sweet & terrible; austere, beautiful, humbling. You will want all of the people you love to read it, too...

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Repetitive, simply told, unmelodramatic, hypnotic, May 27, 2003

By 

John L Murphy "Fionnchú" (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Life With a Star (Hardcover)

Unlike many survivor's accounts, Weil's novel (which I assume from the biographical material prefacing this work is probably quite autobiographical) does not deal with any aftermath to the Holocaust. The book breaks off just as the narrator chooses to hide and therefore conitnue his fight against the never-named but omnipresent "them."

The rapacity and cunning of "them" remind you of Art Speigelman's "Maus," and I wonder if he read this novel earlier. The picture of daily life outside the camps is told with details which constantly circle back to the narrator's lost (married) lover, and understandably, these obsessions only fade gradually, as the transports impinge more directly upon the Jews.

The metaphor of the circus, in which the only animals are people, is sustained admirably in this section of the novel, and the translation conveys well the bare irony of the minimalist style. Almost childlike in its observations, the tone of the novel may be off-putting to some readers wanting more elaborated insight. It took me about sixty or seventy pages to get used to the rhythm, and only in the halfway point did it fully compel me. But I read it in one sitting.

Why? By its steady momentum, you are carried into the horror even as it does not overwhelm you. Through the control of the protagonist, you too gain control over the situation, and resolve to resist the temptation to give in to complacency.

The characters remain in your memory: Roubitschek and his onion, the narrator's almost comic aunt and uncle who blame the whole Nazi invasion it seems on their nephew, Ruzema's memory, and most of all, Tomas the cat. Rarely has a pet assumed such an evocative place in such a story. The daily task of finding food when you can buy so little. The scene of the names being called for transport in the synagogue, the depictions of the grave digging detail, the narrator's shattered home, and the growing despair that battles against the realization that the slow advance of the Allies means that people "out there" are actually fighting to save the narrator: all these add up subtly to a powerful testimony.

The narrator must wear a star that shines only at day, that gives no warmth, that is pinned over one's own heart, but over the course of the novel, he realizes that his status as the "other" frees him (almost like a Camus character) to live.
Worthy of comparison to Imre Kertesz' "Fateless," and Primo Levi's memoirs, this overlooked novel deserves much wider attention. Read it and see why.