Sepharad

Rating:
Summary: Uplifting stories of exile and loss
Review: I've never read anything quite like Sepharad. I thought a bit about W.G. Sebald's work while reading this wonderful book, however, Munoz Molina -- or his exceptional translator -- is more of a poet. The stories that comprise this novel are all about displacement -- enforced and circumstantial -- in a way that is clearly unique to post-WW II Europe. They are stories of wandering while standing still. I was very moved by the book and intend to recommend it to all of the intelligent readers in my world.

Rating:
Summary: A Profound Achievement
Review: I've never read anything quite like Sepharad. I thought a bit about W.G. Sebald's work while reading this wonderful book, however, Munoz Molina -- or his exceptional translator -- is more of a poet. The stories that comprise this novel are all about displacement -- enforced and circumstantial -- in a way that is clearly unique to post-WW II Europe. They are stories of wandering while standing still. I was very moved by the book and intend to recommend it to all of the intelligent readers in my world.

Rating:
Summary: Love, Suffering and Loss
Review: In this novel Munoz Molina sets out to do the impossible, to remember those who have perished in the great disasters of our century and before. As he says, "Love, suffering, even some of the greatest hells on Earth are erased after one or two generations, and a day comes when there is not one living witness who can remember."
The narrator begins with his own story, but soon he is encompassing the lives and memories of both historical and fictional characters. Primo Levy makes an appearance, as does Franz Kafka. What they all have in common is having endured suffering and loss.
Sometimes the narrator addresses himself, sometimes he takes on another's identity to see better through his or her eyes. "YOU ARE," he says late in the novel, "ANYONE AND NO ONE, the person you invent or remember and the person others invent or remember."
Fiction, history and memoir thus blend together over time and space. The novel is structured in a series of chapters, each of which deals with either the narrator or another character. The Holocaust is a major theme, as are the Stalinist purges and the Separdic diaspora, the expulsion of the Jews from Spain by Ferdinand and Isabella.
At times, especially in the beginning, it's hard to keep track of the different speakers, but gradually the methodology becomes clear and the different narratives come together in the narrator's voice to form an effective and very moving whole. Ultimately, then, this is a lyrical, questioning, anguished novel that suggests that any attempt to pay homage to the suffering of the dead is only temporarily successful.

Rating:
Summary: Love, Suffering and Loss
Review: In this novel Munoz Molina sets out to do the impossible, to remember those who have perished in the great disasters of our century and before. As he says, "Love, suffering, even some of the greatest hells on Earth are erased after one or two generations, and a day comes when there is not one living witness who can remember."
The narrator begins with his own story, but soon he is encompassing the lives and memories of both historical and fictional characters. Primo Levy makes an appearance, as does Franz Kafka. What they all have in common is having endured suffering and loss.
Sometimes the narrator addresses himself, sometimes he takes on another's identity to see better through his or her eyes. "YOU ARE," he says late in the novel, "ANYONE AND NO ONE, the person you invent or remember and the person others invent or remember."
Fiction, history and memoir thus blend together over time and space. The novel is structured in a series of chapters, each of which deals with either the narrator or another character. The Holocaust is a major theme, as are the Stalinist purges and the Separdic diaspora, the expulsion of the Jews from Spain by Ferdinand and Isabella.
At times, especially in the beginning, it's hard to keep track of the different speakers, but gradually the methodology becomes clear and the different narratives come together in the narrator's voice to form an effective and very moving whole. Ultimately, then, this is a lyrical, questioning, anguished novel that suggests that any attempt to pay homage to the suffering of the dead is only temporarily successful.

Rating:
Summary: Uplifting stories of exile and loss
Review: Munoz Molina has crafted an utterly brilliant novel that weaves a number of different stories together into a tapestry both sad beyond words and strangely uplifting. His work evoked memories of Solzhenitsyn's finest passages about life in Satlin's camps. Munoz Molina demonstrates how the human spirit can rise above degredation and despair to find dignity and hope. A wonderful achievement.

Rating:
Summary: A Dark Eulogy for the Displaced
Review: SEPHARAD (the Hebrew word for "Spain") is both fiction and nonfiction, a novel, a memoir, a history book and a eulogy for all the Jews who either had to flee Spain or were removed forcibly. It's a eulogy for people who have been displaced and, as someone who has lived away from my home country for many years now, I could identify with some of the pain these narrators were feeling. (Not all, of course, since visits to my home country are still possible.)

SEPHARAD has several narrators, but it's primary one is a shadowy leukemia patient whose life consists of books and memories. One of his greatest regrets is the fact that his children and their children will never know the Spain of his own childhood, a Spain that was very different from the one we know today and, one that contained many Jews.

SEPHARAD begins in Madrid, with a train journey taken by the primary narrator, but it quickly shifts its focus and its narrator, to include all of Europe, both past and present. The use of multiple narrators, a shifting from the first to the third person and shifting time periods is, I think, SEPHARAD's greatest strength. I think it was wonderful for Munoz Molina to entwine his fiction with real life stories and memories, and he seems to have the extreme narrative control required to pull off this difficult balancing act with graceful and seamless transitions.

SEPHARAD isn't a novel as much as it's a collection of loosely joined memories, shared stories and recollections. The thread connecting these narratives is an ephemeral one, but they do all revolve around the theme of displacement, mostly displacement due to the Holocaust or the Spanish Civil War. Surprisingly, for a book written by one of modern day Spain's greatest authors, there are many recollections of Germans in SEPHARAD, especially Germans who resisted Hitler and were eventually punished for that resistance.

The images in SEPHARAD are dark and they revolve around people being led away in the middle of the night, never to be seen again; Spanish refugees awaiting their fate on the beaches at the end of the Spanish Civil War; train journeys that end in the gulag. These are people who have lost their identity and despair of ever finding a new one or returning to the one they once owned. They are people living in limbo, simply doing nothing more than awaiting death. They are people who will never see their families again and who will probably die a pauper's death and be buried in an unmarked grave, as if they had never existed.

I loved almost all of SEPHARAD, but I didn't really like the end. Munoz Molina catapults us from his melancholy, pensive intertwining of narratives ten years into the future in New York City. For me, this changed the "mood" of the book and it was a change I didn't really like. I can't, however, call it a criticism, because this may just be personal preference. Other readers might like this ending or even prefer it.

SEPHARAD is an amazing, highly literary book and one I really can't say enough about. I've never read anything like it, but I hope to read more of Munoz Molina's work in the future. SEPHARAD is a book that is extraordinarily thought provoking and causes a sensitive reader to ask many questions...all of them revolving around the nature of identity, displacement, trust and, of course, memory.

I would definitely recommend SEPHARAD to intelligent readers of highly literary fiction. In fact, for those readers, SEPHARAD is a book that simply can't be missed. Readers looking for something light and entertaining should stay away, however. SEPHARAD, more than any book I've ever read, has left an indelible imprint in my memory.

Rating:
Summary: We Are of a Time and Place
Review: Sepharad is a collection of chapters that make us question who we are in this time and this place. The poetic lyricism of the language is mesmerizing, pulling us back and forth from the 1940s to the present day, to the 1600s, to the early 20th Century. We jump from Spain, to New York, to Russia, to Paris following the Jewish diaspora over the centuries. There is no timeline to restrict us.

We are reminded of Kafka's Metamorphosis in which Gregor wakes up one morning as a giant bug; not the same being as the day before. We are reminded of Kafka's Trial in which the accused is never informed of his crime, other than the crime of being born. Are we the same person today as yesterday or the one we will be tomorrow?

My only regret is that I cannot read this book in the original Spanish. The translation is sheer poetry; the original must be a song.