David Cesarani
A Chronicle of Suffering and Spirituality
The Pity of It All: A Portrait of German Jews 1743-1933
By Amos Elon
Allen Lane/The Penguin Press 446pp £25 order from our bookshop
The Jews of Germany have always fascinated historians, Jewish and non-Jewish. For those with a Zionist inclination the trajectory of German Jews proved the folly of assimilation and the illusion of integration. For German and German-born Jewish scholars who emerged from the wreckage of exile the question that begged for an answer was, How did this happen? Their tortured, often self-tormenting enquiries have caught the imagination of successive generations obsessed by questions of identity and belonging, especially since the 1960s.
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'After all, who knows what anybody is really like, or what they really think? The biographer – same as a painter of portraits – cannot help but reproduce himself to some degree.'
From the archive: Beryl Bainbridge talks to Sebastian Shakespeare.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/sebastian-shakespeare-talks-to-beryl-bainbridge
"fascinating piece of writing ...unexpectedly gripping read...The #RedCircleMinis are a really wonderful initiative; every one I’ve read has been so different and so good... #OneLoveChigusa is an excellent addition to the series! “Thank you @kaggsy59 🙂 https://bit.ly/2ZIdeqL
@johnkampfner's book traces the '"consensual culture" of contemporary Germany, its love of slogging processes and of "getting it right", characteristics epitomised by Angela Merkel.'
Do the Germans really 'do it better'? Thomas Kielinger explores.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/mutti-knows-best