Voyage Into Savage Europe: A Declining Civilization Contributor(s): Hameiri, Avigdor (Author), Appelbaum, Peter C. (Translator) |
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ISBN: 1644693372 ISBN-13: 9781644693377 Publisher: Cherry Orchard Books OUR PRICE: $22.46 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: September 2020 |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - History | Europe - Austria & Hungary - History | Modern - 20th Century - History | Jewish - General |
Dewey: 943.703 |
LCCN: 2020009946 |
Physical Information: 0.53" H x 6" W x 9" (0.76 lbs) 254 pages |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher Description: From the translator of Avigdor Hameiri's Hell on Earth, winner of the 2019 TLS-Risa Domb/Porjes Prize In this unique memoir, now in English for the first time, Israel's first Poet Laureate Avigdor Hameiri details a trip to Europe in 1930 from the perspective of a Hungarian Jew who had served in the Habsburg Army. Upon visiting Austria, Hungary, Romania (including parts of ceded Hungarian Transylvania), and Czechoslovakia (including his Carpatho-Ruthenian homeland), he sees Europe in flux on the brink of an unknown disaster. Austria and Hungary are full of youth whose philosophy is "eat, drink and be merry; tomorrow we die." There is fear of Bolshevism from without, but the unfelt danger is German Fascism. Jews (especially in Hungary) are assimilated but cannot escape from their Jewishness: some are Zionists. Romania is corrupt and antisemitic. In Carpatho-Ruthenia, Hameiri has two premonitions warning him to return to Israel, a prediction of the destruction soon to befall Europe. Hameiri also gives accounts of the artistic and cultural scenes of 1930s Europe, as well as the world of Carpatho-Ruthenian Hasidism, which was soon to be destroyed by the Holocaust. From the growing danger and confusion surrounding inter-war Europe, in prose at once compassionate and bitingly sarcastic, comes a sweeping account of Jewish life in 1930 from one of Israel's prolific writers. |