The Collected Stories of Moacyr Scliar - Jewish Latin American Literature | Perfect for Book Clubs & Cultural Studies
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Product Description
From Brazil's most distinguished and important Jewish writer comes this anthology comprised of six collections: in The Carnival of the Animals, Scliar uses political allegory to convey what was normally censored during the height of repression under Brazil's military regime. These tragicomic stories reveal Scliar's interest in issues of oppression, persecution, holocaust, mutability, and the interplay between good and evil. The Ballad of the False Messiah develops the theme of postponement in the sense that for Jews redemption is always postponed in a vain wait for the Messiah. In The Tremulous Earth Scliar explores cruelty and violence in the tenuous lives of his characters, but his experience as a medical doctor informs his compassion for human frailty. Scliar expands his use of fantasy and magical realism in The Dwarf in the Television Set in topics that range from Jewish prophets to marital revenge. The Enigmatic Eye has been described as a masterpiece evoking the enigmas of art and life, and in Van Gogh's Ear, Scliar uses dark and subtle humor in a collection of biblical parables. Here witchcraft, magic, conundrums, and labyrinths are shown to be part of everyday life. A final autobiographical piece ties the collections together in which Scliar discusses his membership in Jewish, medical, gaucho, and Brazilian "tribes."These powerful stories, individually humorous, bleak, or haunting, together bring a compelling voice of the Jewish Diaspora to the wide readership it deserves.
Customer Reviews
In this superb anthology of six of his short story collections, Moacyr Scliar presents readers with a panoply of themes, such as persecution, exploitation, and how ideologies mold our lives. Many of these themes reflect the times during which Scliar wrote -- a time when literary and other forms of cultural expresson were being surpressed under Brazil's military regime. In the first collection of stories, "The Carnival of Animals," Scliar uses allegory to explore the theme of persecution and exploitation, amongst other things.In his story, "The Cow," Scliar writes of a sailor who, shipwrecked with only a cow for company, comes to rely on that cow for his very survival. Like the loving, maternal tree in the classic, "The Giving Tree," the cow, named Carola, provides the sailor with food, clothing, fuel -- everything.The sailor readily exploits the cow --and ultimately destroys her to save his own life. But though he survives and prospers, the sailor lives a sad, empty life. Thus we are given a brief, anecdotal allegory of how exploitation dooms both the victim and the exploiter. Scliar, a Jew, also writes of Jewish themes, some of which are included in this collection. For example, The Ballad of the False Messiah is an allegory about the Jewish quest for redemption vis a vis a messiah -- and the ultimate futility of that quest. Casting the notorious, historical "false messiah," Shabtai Zvi, as one of his main characters,Scliar uses humor and irony to develop the theme that candidates for the Jewish messiah may come and go, but the Jewish people, with a messiah or without, will prevail. In "The Plagues" readers have an opportunity to see how "the other side fared" during biblical times when God smote the Egyptians with 10 plagues. Here we read of the tribulations of an average, Egyptian family that is arbitrarily being punished for the stubborness of the Pharaoh not to "let the Hebrews go." Again we have allegory, irony, and a true literary gem. Scliar uses biblical parables and elements of that particularly Latin American genre, magical realism, to entertain,enthrall, and enlighten. A wonderful anthology.
