Book description
The Jew Who Was Ukrainian is a blackly comedic, anti-historical, and absurdist novel about a tortured Jewish-Ukrainian man who struggles vainly to find meaning at the intersection of Hitler's Holocaust and Stalin's Gulag. The hero of this preposterous story is Volodymyr Frauenzimmer, a man with a preposterous name and a…
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Why read it?
1 author picked The Jew Who Was Ukrainian as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
I love this book because its author presents the story of the protagonist in such a flip, offhand way that it reminds me a bit of JD Saliger’s Catcher in the Rye. There is dark humor, sarcasm, and total disregard of any possible opposing perspective—yet the main character struggles as a sort of Everyman.
This book also reminds me of Kennedy’s Confederacy of Dunces, parts are laugh aloud funny. I couldn’t help but go along with the joke. Underneath it all, however, is a lot of deep thought (and knowledge) about Ukrainians, Jews, and Russians.
Lots of history,…
From Andrei's list on The best books about the Ukrainian Russian relationship.
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