In kaleidoscopic fragments, Hoffmann refracts Jewish popular lore and folk wisdom through a postmodernist prism, brightening his prose with snatches of verse, songs, diary excerpts, letters, ominous dreams, lush erotic passages and Yiddish sayings. "The Book of Joseph" tells the tragic story of a widowed Jewish tailor and his son in 1930s Berlin. "Katschen" gives an astounding child's-eye view of a boy orphaned in the new state of Israel. The novellas radiate the original poetry of Hoffmann's atomized hypnotic language, which Rosmarie Waldrop has called "utterly enchanting—it's like nothing else."
- ISBN10 0811214052
- ISBN13 9780811214056
- Publish Date 1 September 1999 (first published 15 May 1998)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country US
- Imprint New Directions Publishing Corporation
- Format Paperback
- Pages 162
- Language English