Memoirs of an Anti-Semite: A Novel in Five Stories (New York Review Books (Paperback))

Despite the suggestive title, this is NOT about or written by an antisemite. It is a colorful view of life in eastern Europe between the two World Wars. Very readable. Superb.

This book was recently re-issued by NYRB as part of the series of revived (and ignored/forgotten) "classics". It was favorably (and eloquently) reviewed in the February, 2008 "Atlantic" by Christopher Hitchens and received laudatory reviews at the time of it's initial publication. Probably because of the author's eloquence, poetic imagery and lack of a "compelling" plot-line, it was out-of-print until this 2008 re-issue. The author was born Gregor Arnulph Hilarius d'Arezzo in a fringe region of the former Austria-Hungarian Empire in Czernowitz, Bukovina, the hinterlands where much of the novel is set. While his family supposedly had "origins" in an "aristocratic" Sicilian background, his father was a civil servant. Possibly with intended (or with inadvertent) irony and aping the arriviste behavior ascribed to some of his Jewish characters, he "Germanified" his name and added the aristocratic "von". The author lived and wrote in the 20th century and only recently died (1998) though the novel's atmospherics are more evocative of the late 19th century. It should be noted that the author lived and worked in wartime Berlin as a radio announcer and in films: this put his thoughts and perspectives under the direct scrutiny of Joseph Goebbels' propaganda ministry. The wartime German art world was not a haven for dissenters. Rezzori's book, comprised of 5 "novellas", evokes the "lost" , decadent and slowly dying world of "fin de siecle" mittle Europa. The book is redolent with literary and theological allusions/pretensions, weltschmerz and young adult angst with overtones of sarcastic remove and irony. Laced throughout the book are lacerating and vitriolic anti-Semetic charicatures, uttered (with occasional flashes of self-insight) by the author/protagonist. Similar remarks made by his acquaintances and friends lack this element of sardonic introspection. Occasionally, and equaling in vehement crudeness the remarks of the "goyim", self-hating statements and sweeping condemnations are made by Jewish characters, themselves. All such comments presuppose the Nazi definition of Jews as a distinct "race", with ineradicable characteristics that can be confidently identified by acute observors. Ultimately, the narrator fails to enlighten himself, a particularly mordant observation given not only that the events related in the book transpired during the ascending limb of the European anti-Jewish trajectory immediately preceding WW-II, but were "recollections" penned during the post-war years. One can only comment favorably on the elegance of the writing and ponder the catastrophic implications of the enduring prejudices which pervade the book's characters. As the book will likely be read by those with sophisticated understanding, the more deplorable prejudices will be placed in "appropriate" context, to wit, explained and justified as a time-capsule synopsis of prevailing social mores and behaviors of a particular time and place. Indeed, in

This is one of the best books I have ever read. The writing style is brilliant. You feel like you are living side by side with the author, almost inside his skin, experiencing what he is experiencing, or perhaps at least you are an intimate friend, someone with whom he shares the details of his inner life as well as his worldly adventures.While I read the book, I felt I was engaged in a relationship with a real person, sharing the sights and sounds of rural Rumania, the excitement of Bucharest, the conflicts and confusion he experiences as he faces life on his own and tries to sort out his feelings and experiences about the people he meets in light of the teachings of his family and society.As someone mentioned in another review, Mr. Von Rezzori has the literary voice of a cultured, sensitive, articulate, sophisticated, intelligent, perceptive European. Many times, he charms you quite legitimately with the wit of the raconteur and the insight and agility of the boulevardier.Although the beginning of the book is exciting and full of energy, the end is sad--in fact, deeply mournful--as the author recalls some deep regrets of his life.This book is an interesting journey with an interesting, complex, and articulate man with a gift for literary intimacy.

Gregor von Rezzori has taken some of the hardest things in the world to talk about and with them rendered stories that are decent, beautiful, and immensely entertaining. These are five stories that make up a novel, and it is not always apparent that the narrator is the same exact character from story to story, but the truth and the powerful feelings of each story present a great unity. In each chapter, the narrator grows close to a Jewish person who he loves and admires (though he has been taught to despise them as a class) and ends up hurting or failing them. Sounds monstrous, but it is a wonderful book.I confidently recommend this book to anyone interested in modern literature and European history.

"Memoirs of an Anti-Semite" is a series of short stories, loosely connected and remotely chronological, which capture the inner turmoil and outer turbulence the narrator experiences while growing up in Eastern Europe between the Wars. Romantic Cafe's, spicy brothels, Viennese sophistication and Carpathian bleakness are but a few of the contrasting realities which continue to mold and shape the mind and soul of this young Rumanian. The pathological anti-Semitism he acquires while growing up in a petty bourgeois family in the Bukovina becomes an increasing source of irony in this novel, as the narrator finds himself surrounded more and more by Jewish friends and lovers.