Customer Reviews

Sefarad (Spanish Version) (Spanish Edition)

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This review is based on the English translation:

Molina's novel grapples with the themes of love, exile, and estrangement without once slipping into sentimentality. The dizzying series of vignettes--the Hungarian Jew in Tangiers, the lonely provincial clerk in an unnamed Spanish town, Munzenberg's harrowing flight from his erstwhile Stalinist allies, Jean Amery's terrible hours inside a Gestapo torture chamber--enable the patient reader (this book is no "thriller") to better understand one of the 20th century's most harrowing motifs: exile. And it is this theme, ultimately, that not only provides the scaffolding for all of Molina's stories, but also establishes the link between the extermination of Europe's Jews and the 1492 Spanish Expulsion.

If I had to point to the novel's flaws, I would say that several characters are somewhat stereotypical: the Spanish officer in the marauding German Army who falls in love with the hounded Jewish woman is a bit trite, as are the descriptions of the shopkeeper's attempts to "deflower" the cloistered nun. These are forgivable lapses, however, and do not diminish the originality of this beautiful novel.