After enjoying Ludmilla Ulitskaya's trip to New York, we found this review of Daniel Stein, Interpreter in the Daily Beast incredibly eloquent. Enjoy!
This weekend: a novel of confused religion, one man looks out for fires in the American West, how Hollywood went mad on communism, and the lessons from Hezbollah's wars.
A Faith Without Boundaries
In a time when it is fashionable to define ourselves by identity, Ludmilla Ulitskaya's Daniel Stein, Interpreter is a refreshing affirmation of the beauty of hybridity. Though I had not heard of her before now, Ulitskaya is Russia's bestselling novelist; Daniel Stein had already sold over 2 million copies before being translated into English, and is the winner of Russia's Best Book Award. Ulitskaya is the author of 14 books, including The Farewell Party, Medea and Her Children, and Sonechka, and she has also scooped up the Russian National Literary Prize, the Russian Booker Prize, the Penne Literary Prize, and the Medici Award, not to mention being a laureate for the Simone de Beauvoir Prize. Her immense popularity in Europe, juxtaposed with her relative obscurity in North America, highlights the paucity of contemporary Russian literature being published in the U.S. Hopefully, Arch Tait's translation of Ulitskaya's innovative Daniel Stein, Interpreter reverses this trend.
The title defines her protagonist as an interpreter, but the central idea of the book is that his identity cannot be defined. Based on the real life of Oswald Rufeisen, Daniel is born a Polish Jew who, through a series of "miracles," escapes the Holocaust to become a Catholic priest in Haifa, Israel. He is still Jewish to Nazis (and most everyone else), but not to Israelis. The issue is the difference between religion and ethnicity. Daniel is ethnically Jewish, his nationality is Jewish—he is insistent on this point, but also that he is a Jewish Christian. A Jewish Catholic priest in the Holy Land? To many this seems crazy, but for Daniel this makes perfect sense. Since Jesus was Jewish, Daniel believes that only by performing the Christian sacraments in Hebrew can one be a true Christian.
He forms a congregation that does just this, modeled on the early Nazarene church under the leadership of Jesus' brother James, when there was not much distinction between Jews and Christians, and when Christianity was more like a "Jewish Protestantism."
Daniel asks why people should seek Jesus "in church doctrines which appeared 1,000 years after his death?" He points out that the similarities between the early church and Israeli kibbutzers, Soviet communists, the Druze, and Hassidism, blending the identities by which people divide and define themselves.
As the "Interpreter" of the title suggests, the mutability of language also plays a major role in Ulitskay
Award-winning novelist and human rights activist Ludmila Ulitskaya will appear at two special events this week in New York to mark the U.S. publication of her bestselling novel Daniel Stein, Intepreter. Translated from the Russian by Arch Tait, Daniel Stein, Interpreter is the winner of the Russian Literary Prize and a million-copy seller in Russia.
Institute of Modern Russia and
Harriman Institute will sponsor a reading on
Tuesday, April 5, at 6pm, at Faculty House, Seminar Room No. 1, Columbia University, Upper West Side, Manhattan, New York. Faculty House is located on Columbia University’s East Campus on Morningside Drive, north of 116th Street.
On
Wednesday, April 6, at 7pm, Ludmila Ulitskaya will be honored at an
event sponsored by
CEC Artslink, Baryshnikov Center, and The Overlook Press. This special evening will include a reading, Q &A hosted by Overlook publisher Peter Mayer, and a reception to follow. The event will be held at Baryshnikov Arts Center, Howard Gilman Performance Space, 450 W. 37th Street, New York. Seating is limited and RSVP required:
[email protected].
Ludmila Ulitskaya is the author of twelve works of fiction (over 3.000.000 copies sold in Russia only), three tales for children and of six plays staged by a number of theatres in Russia and in Germany. She is frequently called the most profound and far-reaching author of the contemporary Russian literature.She made her first appearance on the literary stage as a short-story writer; several collections of Ulitskaya's short stories published under various titles are full of rich colour and psychological details. Then followed several novels, each having become an important event of Russian literature of our days.
3/31 is a particularly great--and particularly diverse--pub date for us. Three wildly different books, all of which we love for different reasons. Please give a warm welcome to these new books, available at bookstores and online! Also, New Yorkers, there's still room at Ludmila Ulitskaya's event at Columbia on Tuesday--the rest are sold out. Learn more here!
And without further ado, hello to...
DANIEL STEIN, INTERPRETER Ludmila Ulitskaya
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Daniel Stein, a Polish Jew, miraculously survives the Holocaust by working in the Gestapo as a translator. After the war, he converts to Catholicism, becomes a priest, enters the Order of Barefoot Carmelites and emigrates to Israel. Despite this seeming impossibility, the life and destiny of Daniel Stein are not an invention, the character is based on the life of Oswald Rufeisen, the real Brother Daniel, a Carmelite monk.
STREET KNOWLEDGE King Adz
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An encyclopedia of street culture for those who love Banksy or Irvine Welsh and want to know about the cutting-edge talents, past and present who have shaped urban cool.
THE WHITE-LUCK WARRIOR: THE ASPECT-EMPEROR, BOOK TWO R. Scott Bakker
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Widely praised by reviewers and a growing body of fans, R. Scott Bakker has already established his reputation as one of the few unique new talents in the fantasy genre. Now comes the second book of the Aspect-Emperor series. As Anasûrimbor Kellhus and his Great Ordeal march ever farther into the wastes of the Ancient North, Esmenet finds herself at war with not only the Gods, but her own family as well.
