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Sasha Abramsky

The House of Twenty Thousand Books Paperback – June 19, 2014

by Sasha Abramsky (Author)

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This is the story of Sasha Abramsky s grandparents, Chimen and Miriam Abramsky, and of their unique home at 5 Hillway, around the corner from Hampstead Heath. In their semi-detached house, so deceptively ordinary from the outside, the Abramskys created a remarkable House of Books. It became the repository for Chimen s collection of thousands upon thousands of books, manuscripts and other printed, handwritten and painted documents, representing his journey through the great political, philosophical, religious and ethical debates that have shaped the western world. Chimen Abramsky was barely a teenager when his father, a famous rabbi, was arrested by Stalin s secret police and sentenced to five years hard labour in Siberia, and fifteen when his family was exiled to London. Lacking a university degree, he nevertheless became a polymath, always obsessed with collecting ideas, with capturing the meanderings of the human soul through the world of great thoughts and thinkers. Rejecting his father s Orthodoxy, he became a Communist, made his living as a book-dealer and amassed a huge, and astonishingly rare, library of socialist literature and memorabilia. Disillusioned with Communism and belatedly recognising the barbarity at the core of Stalin s project, he transformed himself once more, this time into a liberal and a humanist. To his socialist library was added a vast trove of Jewish history volumes. Chimen ended his career as Professor of Hebrew and Jewish studies at UCL, London and rare manuscripts expert for Sotheby s. With his wife Miriam, Chimen made their house a focal point for left-wing intellectual Jewish life: hundreds of the world s leading thinkers, from Isaiah Berlin to Eric Hobsbawm, dined at their table. The House of Twenty Thousand Books brings alive this latter-day salon by telling the story of Chimen Abramsky s love affair with ideas and with the world of books and of Miriam s obsession with being a hostess and with entertaining. Room by room, book by book, idea by idea, the world of these politically engaged intellectuals, autodidacts and dreamers is lovingly resurrected. In this extraordinary elegy to a lost world, Sasha Abramsky s passionate narrative brings to life once more not just the Hillway salon, but the ideas, the conflicts, the personalities and the human yearnings that animated it.

Print length

336 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Halban Publishers
Publication date

June 19, 2014
Dimensions

8.54 x 1.14 x 5.63 inches
ISBN-10

190555964X
ISBN-13

978-1905559640
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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Halban Publishers (June 19, 2014)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 336 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 190555964X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1905559640
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 14.5 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 8.54 x 1.14 x 5.63 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #5,190,566 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #23,965 in Author Biographies

Customer Reviews:
60 ratings

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5 star		59%
4 star		24%
3 star		6%
2 star		5%
1 star		6%

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Top reviews from the United States

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T. Barksdale

Like History Well Written and Enjoyable? Read This Book and Be Fulfilled

Reviewed in the United States on February 26, 2016

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This is the highest rating I've ever given a book. I wish I had time to write a really nice review, but I don't, so I'll give some highlights. If you are a history buff, you'll like this book. If you like history that presents a perceptive look at a particular slice of humanity at a particular point in time, but with much historical background, you'll like it even more. If the slice of humanity consists of Jews, and especially Jewish intellectuals in the early to mid-20th Century, your pleasure will increase. (I am a WASP, so that is not special pleading). And if you like history centered on the life of a particularly engaging, important, and charismatic personality who was personally involved in important world events, portrayed in superb writing, you'll be overjoyed.

That is my view of this book about Chimen Abramsky, written by his grandson, Sasha Abramsky. The tone of the book is set early on, when Sasha describes Chimen as the man who collected 20,000 books and kept them in his home, most of them "wondrously rare, bought over the better part of a century." You sense that you will be taken on a stupendous journey that combines the personal autobiography of this incredible person with revelations about the contents of many of those books, and the interplay between them. You are not disappointed. It is a unique person who in his life will be an expert consultant on rare manuscripts to Sotheby's and a card-carrying, dedicated member of the Communist Party until well into the 1950s, all the while presiding over one of the great salons of left-wing European intellectuals.

Sasha sums it up well: "Chimen was like a character out of an Isaac Bashevis Singer story, or an antiquarian out of a Dickens novel, or an eccentric eighteenth-century salon host, or, more accurately, a chimera of them all..acknowledged as one of the world's great experts in socialist and Jewish history." Believe me: take those words as accurate and as indicators of the joy you will have reading about the life and times of this extraordinary person and his friends.

15 people found this helpful

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The Red House at 5 Hillway

Reviewed in the United States on September 20, 2015

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A grandson's well-written tribute to grandparents, especially the grandfather, who valued family and books and their common Jewish intellectual heritage, The long life-span of the two allows for thoughts on political subjects from the end of the Russian czar, through Hitler's reign, to the eventual fall of the Berlin Wall. And allows for musings on what makes for a good life.

I found most interesting the material in this book related to the Stalin era and the one time devotion by this intelligent couple, located in England but with roots in Eastern Europe, to a political cause that failed so miserably.

The role of religious symbols and traditions, even in the absence of explicit faith, is also a theme that is explored with much insight by Mr. Abramsky.

Finally, book collectors will enjoy reading about a high priest of their calling.

18 people found this helpful

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Robert Bolton

A Fun and Fascinating Family Portrait

Reviewed in the United States on May 7, 2016

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Two years ago, the New York Review of Books came out with a charming memoir by Sasha Abramsky titled The House of Twenty Thousand Books. Describing the home and life of his grandfather Chimen Abramsky, he offers a vivid depiction of a peculiar, brilliant man who assembled one of the greatest collection of literature in Great Britain in the twentieth century.

Mr. Abramsky opens with the phone call announcing his grandfather’s death in 2010 at the age of ninety-three, and then turns back to his grandfather’s earliest years. Chimen was born in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution and, as the son of a prominent rabbi, was forced to undergo substantial deprivations and political persecution before his family was allowed to immigrate and settle in London. There, his father became the head of the country’s beth din and one of its most powerful Jewish voices. Despite his father’s religiosity and his own unpleasant experiences with Lenin’s rule, Chimen embraced communism and remained a staunch advocate for nearly twenty years. The author makes clear throughout the book his discomfort at his grandfather’s seemingly willful blindness to the atrocities of Joseph Stalin’s rule over the U.S.S.R. and his belated disavowal long after the tyrant’s crimes became known to the world. Although Chimen’s disavowal of his prior political faith would be forceful, he remained enamored of leftwing causes and associated with some of the leading figures of Great Britain’s Labour Party.

This active involvement in politics is only a secondary subject of the book, however. The main focus and most interesting parts of the book revolve around Chimen’s home and his collection of literature. Over the course of sixty years, Chimen built up a huge collection of Marxist and Jewish history. The number of documents leaves the historian in me green with envy. He owned original letters from Friedrich Engels, rare copies of the Torah from the seventeenth century, incunabula, and a hodgepodge of first editions and small printings that would cost a fortune today. In the aftermath of World War Two, he was able to purchase rare books at a depressed price and build up his collection. With these encounters, he slowly became a leading expert in his field, and would eventually act as an informal adviser and cataloger for the auction house Sotheby’s. Although Chimen enjoyed helping others acquire books, his ultimate passion was still his own collection.

The number of books varied; the author believes there were twenty thousand volumes in the home, while his father believed there were “only” fifteen thousand. My own collection numbers at just under two thousand and is almost unmanageable, so it is a wonder to me where he found the space, let alone managed to prevent the floorboards from collapsing. The author does humorously mention the only two rooms in the home spared decoration were the bathroom and the kitchen. Chimen’s dinner table became a revolving door for a number of Britain’s most prominent intellectuals from Eric Hobsbawm, to Isaiah Berlin, to Harold Pinter. Reading over the snippets of those conversations, I wonder if in this digital age we are not losing an ability to develop the mind in a way that occurs only during in-person conversation over the smell of old paper and warm coffee. When Chimen finally died, the majority of his collection was sold off, with only a few prized pieces scattered among his relatives.

This was a book written with clear affection for its subject. Although the oldest grandson, Sasha Abramsky never pretends he was the clear favorite or privy to secrets of the family no one else knew. He acknowledges the moments of tension in familial interactions, but also recognizes such moments do not define a loving family. His focus is on the vision of a man who admired the mind and recognized books still have worth in this world. Hopefully there are a few others houses like Chimen’s still out there.

6 people found this helpful

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Prof. Centennius

I Learned Much

Reviewed in the United States on December 11, 2017

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I learned a great deal from reading this book about Marxism and Jewish life. The focus is a man, a scholar who never was Orthodox in his Jewishness nor, finally, a believer in Communism. He was, however, a student of both. More than anything else, he was a collector of books and manuscripts about both Judaism and Socialism.

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Lucy

Nicely written and sensitively told story of an extraordinary man ...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 7, 2016

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Fascinating book, which cleverly integrates the story of the author's grandfather - in his capacity as Communist, Russian-born Marxist from a highly observant, rabbinical Jewish family, talented book collector and polymath - with the story of the books themselves, going from room to room in the North London family house. Nicely written and sensitively told story of an extraordinary man and his family, set within the broader historical and political context that influenced their lives so strongly.

One person found this helpful

C. Millington

You don't have to be Jewish.....

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 12, 2016

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You don't have to be Jewish, a Communist or a Londoner to find this a fascinating read, an account not just of a remarkable family but also of the changing times and culture they lived in. A cracker of a book.

3 people found this helpful

John Sheldon

Loved it

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 27, 2017

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Superb. loved everything. absolutely fascinating.

Paul Shaviv

Unusual, affectionate and admiring memoir of a world-class polymath

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 28, 2014

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Chimen Abramsky, one-time Communist (and Stalinist - to the bewilderment of his grandson), and son of one of the most important twentieth century rabbinic scholars, was a world-class polymath, with a totally encyclopedic knowledge of manuscripts, books, footnotes, scholars and libraries.
His grandson has recorded the history and topography of his household, which functioned as research library, international salon for streams of visitors, and a family home. Every room had its subject area – Judaica, European socialism, Marxiana, art history, philosophy and social studies. Sasha describes the historians , politicians, thinkers and scholars who came to sit at the table of this diminutive, engaging personality with his thick Russian accent, which he never lost. His later years were affected by deteriorating health, and he finally passed away at the age of 93 in 2010.
‘The House of Twenty Thousand Books” is an unusual, affectionate, and admiring memoir. Booklovers will love it, as will anyone who knew the enigmatic subject at the centre of the story. The book is not perfect; far more (perhaps repetitive) attention is paid to Chimen’s socialism (and its abandonment) than to his Jewish involvement and scholarship. The author is clearly not on such familiar ground in this area, and makes a few mistakes. But it is a labour of love, and a good one at that.

6 people found this helpful

Davidfulbourn

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 15, 2015

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Brilliant biography of an amazing man combined with the history of Anglo Jewry

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