The Prince of West End Avenue: A Novel [Hardcover]

Alan Isler (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 7, 1994

Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, winner of the National Jewish Book Award, the brilliant debut novel of an author Michiko Kakutani of the New York Times has called "a natural."

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Set in a retirement home in Manhattan's Upper West Side in 1978, Isler's haunting first novel features Otto Korner, an Auschwitz survivor who is directing his fellow retirees in a retirement-home production of Hamlet. Otto blames his smug refusal to heed his first wife's desperate pleas to flee Nazi Germany for the tragedy that befell his family in the Holocaust. To keep his sanity, he searches everywhere for signs of a "greater Purpose," which constantly eludes him, even when the retirement home's new physical therapist turns out to be a dead ringer for Madga Damrosch, an old flame who broke his heart in Zurich in 1916. The retirees' sexual escapades, feuds and political debates alternate with Otto's flashbacks to Hitler's Germany, or, much more often, to Zurich, where as a young literary journalist and emigre German poet he met Lenin and mingled with Tristan Tzara, Hans Arp and their Dadaist circle. Isler, who teaches English literature at Queens College, has created a deeply cultured, fiercely articulate protagonist whose ironic voice hooks the reader as he ruminates on death and old age, love and libido, Mozart and the madness of history.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

At first glance, this novel is a deceptively humorous take on life in a Manhattan Jewish retirement community. The narrator, Otto Korner, is writing a journal of the events surrounding a production of Hamlet at the Emma Lazarus Home, a production beset by catastrophe as various cast members jockey for power within the theatrical group. Yet this affectionate look at the foibles of old age becomes a moving meditation on the guilt of survivors and the means by which those who have experienced the unspeakable continue to exist despite the emotional baggage they carry. Korner, who lost his entire family in the Holocaust, spends his days plotting to gain the role of Hamlet and directorship of the drama, but this activity is only an attempt to keep the doors of memory firmly closed. Isler deftly limns the denizens of the home to create a vital world. For general collections.
- Andrea Caron Kempf, Johnson Cty. Community Coll. Lib., Overland Park, Kan.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 246 pages
• Publisher: Bridgeworks; 1st edition (April 7, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1882593049
• ISBN-13: 978-1882593040
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #370,279 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "To be or not to be?" Eisler restates the question., July 4, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: The Prince of West End Avenue: A Novel (Hardcover)

An amazing journey through the life of a one-time Jewish refugee who has found his way to a retirement home on West End Avenue. Here, he eventually directs a production of Hamlet put on by the residents and comes to understand himself better in the process. Loaded with humor and peopled with characters you don't want to miss, this book digs much deeper than is belied by its light-hearted approach

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars More in heaven and earth, Horatio!, June 13, 2004

By 

Tracy Davis (California, United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Prince of West End Avenue: A Novel (Paperback)

In this novel, the winner of the National Jewish Book Award, author Alan Isler creates a world populated by libidinous senior citizens; however, although humorous, there are moments of profound realization as well. The main character is Otto Korner, a survivor of the Holocaust, who now resides in the Emma Lazarus retirement home in the West End, Manhattan. He is involved in a production of `Hamlet', put on by the home's residents. Part of the plot revolves around the attempt to put on a play where the actors keep dying, end up in hospital, or simply walk away in a huff. At the same time, Korner encounters a new young physical therapist who reminds him of a woman whom he knew in the inter-war years and who most likely died in WWII, and whose death he may have been responsible for. The past and present merge as Otto takes over directing `Hamlet'; the philosophical musings on death and life mirror Otto's reminiscences. We find he attempted to be a part of the avant-garde movement in Europe after WWI, where he encountered Magda Damrosch, a beautiful woman who toyed with Otto's heart. This is one of those novels where not much happens, yet everything happens, and to say more would spoil it. Suffice to say, Isler's characters are brilliant, and the weaving of `Hamlet' with the Holocaust is mesmerizing. There's enough humor to break the sometimes bleak outlook of some of the characters, and the scenes where the play is being rehearsed are priceless.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Brilliantly Tied Together, October 25, 2006

By 

Eve Galewitz (Connecticut, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Prince of West End Avenue: A Novel (Hardcover)

Hamlet as metaphor for the self-denial practiced by German Jewry as the earth was set on fire around them - brilliant theory and nicely carried through in this novel by Isler. The reader becomes engrossed in the story told piecemeal by Korner, the "Prince" of a German-Jewish family and later a holocaust survivor haunted by the voices of ghosts he is desperate to ignore. Like Hamlet, the soul tortured by the voice of his father's ghost, Korner is tortured by his past actions (or rather inactions) during the Shoah. Though not a loveable or perhaps even likeable character, the reader comes to empathetize with him so much so that his catharsis is so palpable that we yearn for it and feel its release with him. Perhaps a little slow for some readers in the beginning; I say stick with it and you will feel rewarded when you finish. Marvelous for book club discussion groups.