Little did I know; recollections and reflections

by Maurice Samuel

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326 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1963

About the author

Maurice Samuel (February 8, 1895 – May 4, 1972) was a Romanian-born British and American novelist, translator and lecturer.

Born in Măcin, Tulcea County, Romania, to Isaac Samuel and Fanny Acker, Samuel moved to Paris with his family at the age of five and about a year later to England where he studied at the Victoria University. His parents spoke Yiddish at home and he developed strong attachments to the Jewish people and the Yiddish language at early age. This later became the motivation for many of the books he wrote as an adult. Eventually, he left England. Samuel emigrated to the United States and settled in New York in 1917.

A Jewish intellectual and writer, he is best known for his work You Gentiles, published in 1924. Most of his work concerns Judaism or the Jew's role in history and modern society, but he also wrote more conventional fiction, such as The Web of Lucifer, which takes place during the Borgias' rule of Renaissance Italy, and the fantasy science-fiction novel The Devil that Failed. Samuel also wrote the nonfiction King Mob under the pseudonym "Frank K. Notch". He and his work received acclaim within the Jewish community during his lifetime, including the 1944 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for his non-fiction work, The World of Sholom Aleichem. He received the Itzik Manger Prize for Yiddish literature posthumously in 1972.

He died in 1972 in New York City.

Reviews

[Fred Kohn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maurice Samuel is the greatest Jewish writer that you've never heard of. I only know him because of the circulation of an anti-Zionist meme on Facebook that features his infamous quote, "We Jews are the Destroyers." This is a quote from his book You Gentiles, which I have yet to read, but will do so in due time. Little Did I Know was written years later, by a mature Samuel looking back on his life. By this time he has renounced his earlier Socialism, but interestingly says nothing about You Gentiles; neither whether he stands by his earlier statement or repudiates it. Little Did I Know is remarkable not for its overt descriptions of Jewish philosophy (there is very little of this), but for the recollection of a remarkable Jewish life, spanning residence in at least 5 countries (that is all I counted at any rate), and the rubbing of elbows with an astonishing array of characters both known and unknown to history. As a science geek, I couldn't help but be impressed that the latter included Ernest Rutherford, discoverer of the proton, and a professor under whom Maurice Samuel studied physics!