THE BOOK FAIR

Review:

"Sepharad", the title of Molina’s latest work, translates to the Hebrew word for Spain.  This intense, engaging and complex novel encompasses a series of stories involving anti-Semitism, the Holocaust, the purges of Stalin, the expulsion of Jews from Spain, and exile. 

 

Molina opens Sepharad with Sacristan, the story of a man’s nostalgia for his hometown, the townspeople, activities of times passed as well as the memories of favorite foods.  He describes events in his childhood, his father taking him to the barber, the barber cutting his hair; he recalls the Jewish tailor shop and the shop of Mateo the cobbler.  He remembers the anger of the Jewish tailor when Utrera, the sculptor refused to pay him for his well cut suits.  With clarity he describes the annual Easter Parade, the figures sculpted by Utrera and the image of the ugly and leering Judas on a float depicting the Jewish tailor.  Years later, on a visit to his hometown, Sacristan unexpectedly meets Mateo, who does not recognize him.  Sacristan realizes his memories are his alone and one can really never go home again.

 

The next story, “Copenhagen”, slips into the nightmare of the Holocaust.  The fears of passengers traveling by train at night, attempting escape in unfamiliar territory.  Primo Levi, a chemist and writer, caught under the Nazi boot, endured five days on a cattle car headed to Auschwitz.  In Ravensbruck Concentration Camp, Milena Jesenska’ reveals to Margarete Buber-Neumann, that Franz Kafka was her lover, deceased for twenty years, whose letters to her were later published.

 

“those who wait” tells the stories of those who determine not to leave their countries, thinking that escape is unnecessary, that all will settle, so sure that their work, dedication or connections will save them.  Eugenia Ginsburg, born in Moscow to a Jewish pharmacist, dedicated her life to communism and rose in the Communist Party.  When warned of danger, she refused to leave and was caught in Stalin’s web of terror and sent to the Gulag for eighteen years.

 

In the forth story, “silencing everything”, a German soldier, of Spanish nationality hides from Russian partisans.  The peasant woman he fed helps save him.

In the final, sixteenth story, “Sepharad”, a Spaniard offers his story.  He tells of his life growing up in Alcazar, of his ties to the church, of his difficulties in adolescence, his sense of exclusion in that he was not athletic, and of his first marriage.  He recalls learning that in 1492 Granada was re-conquered by Spain, that Columbus discovered America and that the Jews were expelled.  He tells of his interest in an old Jewish neighborhood and of a meeting with Emile Roman, a Jewish Sephardic writer who claimed his Jewish faith not from his ancestors but because of anti-Semitism.  Emile explains “being Jewish is unpardonable but to stop being Jewish is impossible…”   Emile states that any Christian, guilty of any sin could always repent but Jews had no such recourse as their sins predated them.  He offers that Spain was no exception in expelling Jews, in that France and England had previously done so.  He tells the story of Jean Amery, a philosopher and the story of a writer Hans Mayer, born in Austria who never realized he was Jewish until Germans designated him so; after his escape from Germany, he was caught in hiding Brussels, then sent to Auschwitz.

He recalls taking a trip to Germany in his younger years, having been invited to give a speech.  He remembers he was surprised to find he was almost accosted with politeness.  As he sat in a café, he wondered how many of those around him had once yelled the chant Heil Hitler.

Later in life, the doctor, struggling against leukemia, remembers a trip to New York with his wife.  On the last day of their trip, they visit a museum filled with Spanish antiquity where he is particularly fascinated by a painting of Velázquez, a girl with big eyes, the eyes of one exiled.

 

Comments:

Masterful; unique.