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The rest is Commentary...
Every month, Commentary explores a key Jewish thinker or writer, with a brief biography, an introduction to their major works, and suggestions for further reading. Enjoy!
Author of the Month for March
Dan Jacobson was born in South Africa to Lithuanian Jewish parents. He has worked as a schoolteacher in London, as a journalist in South Africa and also spent some time on a kibbutz in Israel. He moved to England in 1955 where for many years he pursued a career as a freelance writer of fiction and essays. He then entered academic life and eventually became professor of English Literature at University College London. |
Dan
Jacobson |
| He also held visiting professorships and fellowships at universities in the United States and Australia. Since his retirement from University College he has resumed working as a full-time writer. His novels and stories are strikingly various in nature and set in many countries - among them South Africa, England, ancient Palestine and the Republic of Sarmeda, a country of his own invention. He is the author of novels, short stories, as well as essays and autobiographical and critical works, which have been widely acclaimed and have been awarded several leading literary prizes. He will be appearing at jewish Book week discussing his new novel, All for Love. | |
Essential Reading
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All For Love
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She was a princess, the daughter of King Leopold II of the Belgians, the wife of a prince, and a familiar figure in the court of the aged Emperor, Franz Joseph of Austria-Hungary. Her lover was second lieutenant Geza Mattachich. Ten years younger than the princess, a dashing figure in his fitted tunic and shiny boots, he was an unknown, undistinguished, unmoneyed subaltern: a man of dubious origin and extravagant ambition. Ahead of them both lay assignations, adultery, flight, the squandering of a fortune (not his; not hers either, as things worked out), a duel, imprisonment, bankruptcy, morphine, madness (or alleged madness). And, as well, a real-life heroine - in the form of canteen-worker Maria Stoger - who was no less ready than the princess and her soldier to risk all for love. Beautifully handled, romantic, sumptuous, full of wit and a real treat to read, the action of Dan Jacobson's All For Love moves from one end to the other of pre-First World War Europe. Constantly fusing historical fact with fiction, it elevates three extraordinary characters from the footnotes of history and puts them, along with their few friends and many enemies, at the centre of a drama that is both comic and painful, and as astonishing as it is convincing.
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Celia Dinan died some two hundred years ago - back in the twenty-first century. As her life is rediscovered it becomes apparent that she is the author of a powerful and passionate tale - a tale which only she could have written but which 'everywoman' will painfully acknowledge as her own.
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The Confessions of |
Josef Baisz is as remarkable a creation as the imaginary country, Sardema, in which he lives. Throughout his life - whether as soldier, scholar, husband, murderer, kidnapper or traitor - he is driven by the overwhelming urge to subvert and to destroy. A man of peculiar genius, this desire spurs him on to 'greater' things until he finally arrives at the inevitable, and yet crushingly unexpected denouement of the tale which he himself narrates.
The Rape Of Tamar Dan Jacobson retells the age-old, biblical story of the rape of King David's daughter by her brother Amnon. Out of this material he creates a tragic and sardonically humorous novel, wholly modern in spirit and yet true to the time in which it is set. On first publication, The Rape of Tamar was hailed as a masterpiece. The Story of the
Stories
What kind of a God singles out a particular people for special favours and punishments? What does being chosen by God mean to both parties? What are the opportunities and temptations of such a relationship? Writing from a secular point of view, Jacobson offers a profound and serious meditation that sheds a new light on biblical scholarship and orthodox theology. On first publication, The Story of the Stories was at once perceived to be a seminal work. Previous
Authors of the Month Also
Recommended:
£8.99
£9.95
Abraham Joshua Heschel
Saul Bellow
Henry Roth
John Updike
