The Messiah of Stockholm

by Cynthia Ozick

A small group of Jews weave a web of intrigue and fantasy around a book reviewer's contention that he is the son of Borus Schultz, the legendary Polish writer killed by the Nazis before his magnum opus, THE MESSIAH, could be brought to light.

Genres: Fiction, Jewish, Novels, Literature, Literary Fiction, American, Sweden

144 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

Recipient of the first Rea Award for the Short Story (in 1976; other winners Rea honorees include Lorrie Moore, John Updike, Alice Munro), an American Academy of Arts and Letters Mildred and Harold Strauss Living Award, and the PEN/Malamud award in 2008.

Upon publication of her 1983 The Shawl, Edmund White wrote in the New York Times, "Miss Ozick strikes me as the best American writer to have emerged in recent years...Judaism has given to her what Catholicism gave to Flannery O'Connor."

Reviews

[Ian "Marvin" Graye · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sublime Quandary

This is the most sublime novel. Yet, I can't recall when such a sublime work has ever placed me in such a quandary.

If you're the sort of reader who can cry in "The Name of the Rose", because the Library burned to the ground, then this book is for you.

If you believe that the sum total of human wisdom and culture can be contained in its literature, art, film and music, and that the loss of these cultural works is a tragedy, then this book is for you.

If you grieve at the loss of Bruno Schulz or Walter Benjamin or any other victim (whether Jewish or otherwise) as a result of the Holocaust, then this book is for you.

However, the novel was created within the framework of Judaism, and its approach is not as simplistic as the one I have painted.

The Resurrection of The Messiah

Bruno Schulz died, leaving us a number of short stories and essays that have since been published in English, partly as a result of the efforts of Philip Roth (to whom this book is dedicated, and who has also written fiction about Bruno Schulz).

Schulz also completed a novel called "The Messiah", which, unfortunately, has never been found.

The premise of this novel is that a copy of the Polish manuscript has been recovered, resurrected, redeemed, and makes its way to Stockholm.

Lars Andemening is a book reviewer for a Swedish daily newspaper. He is an orphan. He suffers from existential dread. He believes that he was born in Poland, and that his father was Bruno Schulz. He immerses himself in all things Bruno.

It's hard to know how much of Lars is real and how much is made up. "I made up my name. I made up my father...[My] father out of libraries, [my] name out of dictionaries."

If this fabrication is true, Lars seems to have constructed himself out of the pages of books, out of literature. This is the only evidence he has of his father.

Exaltation and Other Forms of Decline

The Holocaust has left a hole, a pit, not just for Jews, but for the whole of humanity.

The challenge for all of us has been whether we can fill that vacuum, who can fill it, and what to fill it with.

It's tempting to worship every life that was lost. It's tempting to worship every work of art that was created by a Holocaust victim. It's tempting to worship every work of art that was lost as a result of the Holocaust. It's tempting to mourn every work of art that was never created as a result of the Holocaust.

Ozick hints that this would not necessarily be the right approach, and her book is the vehicle for expressing this scepticism.

Early in the novel, one of Lars' work associates says to him:

"The trouble with you, Lars, is that you're a beautiful soul. A daily reviewer shouldn't be a beautiful soul. It leads to belles-lettres, which leads to exaltation and other forms of decline."

When I first read this, I thought it was amusing. However, there's a sense in which Ozick was serious.

Appropriating Bruno Schulz

Lars has appropriated the identity of his ostensible father. He is constructed from his father's "language. Literature. My father's genius." He has become a marionette who sees with "his father's murdered eye...his own...and then, not his own."

There is something inauthentic, potentially fake, in what Lars has done, in how he has created his identity, in how he has filled the vacuum. His father's eye is perjured.

This concern with genuineness, authenticity, recognition, forgery, and fakedom calls for the novel to be read alongside William Gaddis' "The Recognitions".

Saul Bellow read both books, and praised Ozick as the real thing, somebody who was "brilliant and brave at the controls", and yet consciously and strategically stopped short of Gaddis' "dazzling virtuosity" in dealing with her subject matter. What he had in mind was how she dealt with the Jewish question.

His Father's Eyes

One of the characters, the bookseller Heidi Eklund, appears to try to turn Lars away from Bruno Schulz, by criticising "his father's tales - animism, sacrifice, mortification, repugnance! Everything abnormal, everything wild...She scolded him for turning his father into some sort of ceremonial mystification; there was a smoldering cultishness in all of it."

Still, it's possible that this criticism is a lure designed to attract him even more to Schulz.

Lars continues to believe. Even reality (or our perception of it) is shaped by literature:

"Reality is as thin as paper and betrays with all its cracks its imitative character."

It's true that Lars exalts beauty. His quest is to find "The Messiah". In language that resonates of Walter Benjamin, he feels "the attraction - the seduction, the magnetism - of a sublime text...What he wants is the original of things...He's a priest of the original..."

When, finally, Lars gains access to what might be "The Messiah", he no longer sees with his father's eyes:

"Lars, looking with all his strength, felt his own ordinary pupil consumed by a conflagration in the socket. As if copulating with an angel whose wings were on fire."

Only, the question must be asked, is this conflagration, this fire, the work of God or the Devil?

The Quest for the Real Messiah

Is this manuscript a false Messiah? What is the real thing? Can there be only one real Messiah? And can it, by definition, not be a work of literature, a book, even a holy book, a work of holy scripture?

Ultimately, Ozick seems to suggest that we can only find ourselves through the Messiah, not our father, his books or our own obsessions.

For the same reason, the only way to fill the vacuum left by the Holocaust is to fill it with God.

A Paradox of the Author's Own Creation

Ozick has written elsewhere that "the story-telling faculty itself can be a corridor to the corruptions and abominations of idol worship, or the adoration of magical event."

I can respect her views internally within Judaism or any other version of Theism. However, the issue just doesn't arise for an Atheist.

The paradox with this particular work is that it is nevertheless attractive, seductive, magnetic, sublime.

Perhaps, Ozick is equally skilled in the ways of the Devil! But she would doubtless take offence at the compliment intended by this comment. Perhaps she is, after all, in the words of Saul Bellow, just as much "a dazzling virtuoso".

[William2 · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Stockholm of 1980 or so a man is living in a tiny cold water flat. He writes reviews for a local newspaper of modest circulation. He is a refugee from war-torn Poland and, he says, the son of that Polish genius -- shot by a Nazi in the streets of Drohobycz Poland in 1942 -- Bruno Schulz. He is obsessed with his father's legacy, most notably the lost manuscript known to us today as The Messiah. He befriends a bookseller in town, a Mrs. Eklund, with whom he shares his literary obsessions, and virtually assails with orders of works by obscure Polish authors.

From this slight beginning a deliciously complex literary caper ensues which sent many a shiver of pleasure and astonishment through this reader. The way the novel takes up Bruno Schulz's biography and makes it its own is extraordinary. Lars Amendening, for that is the name Schulz's son assumed on being adopted by his Swedish foster parents, is given a rather abrupt awakening from his dreamlike and socially unremarkable life. Fantastic writing here. I must read this one again. I think it will last, at least I hope it will. Recommended to my fellow GoodReaders with something approaching ecstatic joy....

One of the most accomplished novels I've read.

[Richard Derus · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rating: 3* of five

Like every Cynthia Ozick book I've ever read, this is a series of gorgeous sentences describing in acute, sharp-edged clarity the existence of Jews whose inner lives are bound to a vision of amorphous Jewishness. It is protean, this sense of Jewishness, it refuses to settle into a single defining characteristic while imbuing the entire story with its unique but barely detectable presence.

This is an astonishing achievement. It is also the thing that Ozick does. It is, therefore, susceptible to aesthetic fatigue. I've read this book...The Shawl, The Puttermesser Papers...and am full up on Ozickishness. I am glad I read this short novel, I am delighted with the conceit of Bruno Schulz's unknown son, I was delighted with the richly imagined bookshop world Ozick sets so much of the action within. But I am done now, I've been there and I've done that and there isn't a lot of reading time left in the next 20-ish years so I'll be moving on to other delights.

[Cody · Rating 3 out of 5]

Manifest of Problems RE Reading of Dear Friends’ Book Recommendations

1. If you don’t like it, you’re going to feel like an asshole
2. If you lie, you add another barb to Satan’s scarlet tail
3. If you say nothing and never review/rate, best case scenario is that said friend will think you
never actually read it
4. If you do like it, then none of this applies (go—carry on with your day, and God love you)
5. Literature is divisive by nature, viz one person’s Gravity’s Rainbow is another’s
Goldfinch (excepting Nathan, who loves them both)
6. Which leaves you to write the review and to do so honestly; your friend deserves it
7. Why does your friend deserve it? He or she shared a private part of themselves with you and
earnestly hoped you would be moved like they were. That implies trust, an intellectual fidelity
8. Thus, said friend may be slightly hurt by your not seeing the same thing and/or feel that the risk
is not worth the reward in the future; but…
9. Again, your friend deserves honesty. That’s one of the hubs of friendship
10. There are now two (2) possible choices:
a. You write the review, being as euphemistic as possible. You know you’re not saying what
you’d normally say, but a little deception to preserve the fragile nature of friendship is
warranted
b. You write the review as if said book were randomly selected at a local _____ and proceed
to rip it a new asshole/acknowledge it not being for you/rate it with low stars, etcetera &c
11. Now we arrive at the crux. Of these two choices, two (2) distinct reactions are most plausible:
a. Friend reads cloaked review and sees through your smokescreen, shadowplay, misdirection,
puppet show…
b. Friend, deeply insulted by your assumption that honesty would be too much for what you
perceive to be their precious nature, decides that you need to die
c. Friend boards international flight, purchases rifle at Wal-Mart, and shoots you through the
heart in front of your child on your front lawn (cue: slow-motion falling, arms prostrate;
child’s toy hitting ground; Barber’s “Adagio for Strings”)
______________OR________________________
a. Friend reads honest review, thinks you are a total, irredeemable prick
b. Friend, deeply insulted by your insouciance and lack of base humanity, decides that you
need to die
c. Friend boards international flight, purchases rifle at Wal-Mart, and shoots you through the
heart in front of your child on your front lawn (cue: slow-motion falling, arms prostrate;
child’s toy hitting ground; Barber’s “Adagio for Strings”)
12. CONCLUSION: There’s just no way to win, however noble your intentions.
13. RECOMMENDATION: Purchase rifle at Wal-Mart prior to posting review, then just lay in your
shrubbery until you get the jump and blow the bastard back to the hellfire from which they
escaped


(Love you JM xo)

[Tijana]

Mesija u Stokholmu pojavio se kod nas za vreme poslednjih trzaja edicije Reč i misao ali ga nisam tada pročitala jer me je naslov zaveo na pogrešan trag i jer je moj jedini prethodni susret sa Sintijom Ozik bio preko fenomenalne ali jezive priče Šal (ključne reči: majka s decom, konclogor, električna ograda) koja baš nije mamila na dalje čitanje. Na listu čitanja roman mi je dospeo mnogo kasnije, kad sam saznala da se u njemu zapravo razvija ideja da je nekako negde sačuvan poslednji rukopis Bruna Šulca, Mesija.
I mogu da kažem kako sam dobila mnogo više nego što sam očekivala, a pre svega mnogo drugačije. Jer je ovaj roman u prvom sloju zajedljivo duhovit prikaz života švedskih književnih kritičara početkom osamdesetih – i recimo, za današnjeg čitaoca osim standardne taštine kritičara i bitke između ljubitelja Kiša i ljubitelja (švedskih) bestselera i bitke za „prestižne“ dane u nedelji (ponedeljkom se objavljuju najjadniji kritičari jer su tada čitaoci još mamurni) i beskrajnih tračeva i spletki najzabavniji i najcrnohumorniji biće podatak da je tada književni kritičar mogao (skromno!) da živi od jednog prikaza nedeljno u drugorazrednim novinama. Zamislite koliko smo ovde na Gudridsu oteli leba iz usta kritičarima a i sami sebi, plače mi se.
U drugom sloju, Mesija je priča o identitetu - jer je pomenuti kritičar ratno siroče i u nekom trenutku je zaključio da mu je otac sigurno Bruno Šulc jer se on baš toliko pronalazi u njegovim pričama. I jer većina drugih likova i jeste i nije ono što tvrde da jesu. I jer rukopis koji primamljivo izranja iz plastične kese možda jeste a možda i nije Šulcov rukopis a možda nije ni falsifikat nego nadahnuta rekreacija (i usput, u pola rečenice, autorka nas upozna s postojanjem kabalističkog koncepta reinkarnacije zvanim gilgul, svašta čovek nauči). I odnos zlosrećnog kritičara prema tom rukopisu odrediće mu dalji život, ali da ne kvarim.
U trećem sloju, ovaj roman je diskretan ali jasan omaž Henriju Džejmsu možda i više nego samom Šulcu ili Kišu koji se pominje na dva-tri mesta. Čak ne omaž koliko izraz ljubavi. U nekom trenutku nam se prepričava prikaz knjige koja je zapravo tipičan pozni Džejms a istovremeno u njoj odjekuju i teme romana i još se pomalo parodira. Ali s ljubavlju. I e da, za one koji čitaju Džejmsa, ako pomenem Aspernove rukopise, to vam je zapravo spojler kraja. I sve to u tesnim granicama jedne džejmsovske duže novele ili baš pokratkog romana.

I hej, ako se pitate da li je slučajno što ovaj (avaj, neplaćeni) prikaščić kačim na Gudrids u ponedeljak, odgovoriću vam kao Lori Anderson u onoj pesmi, TAKE A WILD GUESS.

[Lee Klein · Rating 3 out of 5]

At times, a really enjoyable bit of brunoschulzophilia, a hysterical realist precursor focused on the famously lost manuscript of The Messiah but mainly about lost fathers and impossible surrogates. At other times, an overly literary dullard. A great idea but the execution felt too much like a New Yorker cartoon that someone who laughs in silent exclamation marks might find funny but everyone else just gapes at it. Hypnotic if often hard to focus on, well formed, absolutely informed, with every sentence stretched and split open by an exacting comma for emphasis and rhythm. But the attentive acrobatic language seems a little like a Nabokovian vaudevillian harlequin on a champagne bender: at times, giddy; at times, emitting a whiff of long suffering thanks in part to historical horrors but also to performance fatigue. Animated prose didn't always animate the life it relayed. I appreciated sentences but felt like the story went off the rails as it passed page 100 en route to the end on 142. Got a little ridiculous. Felt like fiction, all the more when it mentioned forgery and fakery. Its characters have fabricated their identities -- I get it. But still. Overtly clever throughout yet no LOL action. A good read for Bruno Schulz fans who've already read David Grossmann's excellent See Under: Love, Nicole Krauss's pretty OK The History of Love, Danilo Kis's Bruno Schulz-inspired masterpiece Garden, Ashes, and apparently Philip Roth's The Prague Orgy and JSF's Tree of Codes (haven't read those last two but added them thanks to this article: Appropropriations of Bruno Schulz). Mentions all your favorite 20th century Eastern European authors, too. Even Danilo Kis. But still. 3.25 stars for me.

[K.D. Absolutely · Rating 3 out of 5]

I appreciate the stylish modernist writing. I also saw myself in the character of the main protagonist Lars Andeming a 40-something book reviewer for a Stockholm daily. I read books everyday letting them up only when I am in the office, at the gym or inside the church. When at home, I almost always read except when I sleep (but you know sometimes I see pages and texts of a book in my dream), eating, doing household chores, talking to my loved ones (I close the book when they try to communicate to me), writing my thoughts about a book (like this one) or when taking a bath (I have to specify that one because when I am doing something else inside the toilet, most of the time I also read a book). Then there is this once-a-month meet up (we call it a book field trip) with my bibliophile friends to talk about books the whole day. That basically is my reading habit.

And sometimes I wonder, like Lars, who am I as a person. We all sometimes ask ourselves about that, right? We sometimes turn philosophical about it. I have come to meet so many fictional characters and yet I still do not know who am I really and what is my role in life. That's why lately I am also been reading religious books instead of the usual 1001, 501, Pulitzer, Booker, National, Nobel, Pinoy, etc. Turning 50 this year requires me to be more introspective and reflect on what I did the past half of my life and how will I spend the second half. I do not know really. That's why I was able to relate to the doldrums that Lars probably feels while writing all those book reviews and when he starts imagining that he is the son of a great Jewish novelist Bruno Schultz (1892-1942), who I only learned from reading this book that he was a real novelist and has a collection of short stories, The Street of Crocodiles and Other Stories included among the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. According to Wiki, at the time of Schultz's death, he was writing his masterpiece entitled The Messiah and its manuscript disappeared after he was shot by a Nazi commander in 1942.

That basically is what American Jewish novelist Cynthia Ozick (born 1928) finely used as a springboard of this book, said to be her best so far. Her writing, being stylish, is harder to understand than those of my favorite Philip Roth who also writes a lot of novels with Jewish setting. Ozick's style is modenist, philosophical and almost magical. Roth's is more straightforward, conventional and almost mainstream.

This is my first Ozick but I will definitely read her other her other books that I already have in my to-be-read folder: the novel Heir to the Glimmering World (2004) and her collection of essays The Din in the Head (2006). I only bought these when I was desperately looking for a copy of this "The Messiah of Stockholm" in our local bookstores. Only to find one online at Amazon.com.

[Tim Chamberlain · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was like. Was like a series of short sentences. Staccato, fragments, broken, torn, poignant, left hanging and unresolved. It's plot was leaden and loomed like a giant dark angel with slowly out-stretching filigree wings, charcoal dusted, spreading out, unfolding, ever so slowly. Its repetitions, oh, its repetitions! Circling, prowling, conspiring, never to resolve into anything concrete or substantial. 'That very text - the thing itself, the words, the syllables, the letters!' Illusion, illusion! Like a half-remembered dream of groggy sleep, disturbed and lingering. 'A type of cuneiform, perhaps, though it was impossible to say what this unreadable text might be proposing as a thesis or axiom.' I wanted to like this book, very much I wanted to like it. After all, it was a birthday gift from my sister. But it's hard to like a book whose central characters are not likeable. Harder still if its written style grates with your inner ear, and forcing yourself to read it becomes like gasping for air whilst sinking in a sea of dense, thick, black crude oil, oozing. At least it was short, I'll say that for it. Alone ... it was short, and I feel so guilty; but only because it was a gift. I was meant to like it. But I didn't.

[Margaret · Rating 3 out of 5]

What an odd little book this is. The main character, Lars Andemening, a Polish-born orphan adopted by Swedish parents, works as a part-time book reviewer for a Swedish newspaper where he is ranked third of three reviewers. His reviews, focusing on major eastern European authors, are dark and dense, and not at all popular with the newspaper’s readers. He lives in a tiny apartment and spends most of his time napping under a pile of quilts. He’s been married twice and has a daughter, but all of those people are no longer a part of his life. His second wife and daughter have moved to America. His one friend is Heidi Eklund, a bookseller who aids Lars in his search for more of the great dark works of literature. Heidi claims to be married to a Dr. Eklund, but Lars does not believe the doctor exists. Even though he does not know who his biological parents were, he is convinced that he is the son of the late Polish writer Bruno Schulz, whose self-portrait graces the frontispiece of the novel. Schulz, who was gunned down by a Nazi police officer on the streets of his hometown: Drohobycz, Poland, was the author of three literary works, two extant and the third, the missing Messiah of the title of Ozick’s novel. Lars learns Polish in order to read his "father’s" works in their original language.

During the course of this densely written novel, Lars meets Adela, a woman who claims she is the daughter of Bruno Schulz and who shows up at Heidi’s bookstore with an urn containing what she says is the original manuscript of her father’s third book: The Messiah. At the same time, Dr. Eklund shows up in the bookstore, and the Adela’s resemblance to the doctor is noted. In one of the more bizarre sections of the book, Lars takes the urn from Adela and literally dives into the pile of the scraps of text. At the same time as this plot recreating the great, lost text thickens and grows into an enormous conflagration, Lars begins reviewing worthless popular fiction for the newspaper and becomes its lead reviewer. Messages everywhere.

Heavy symbolism about creating fiction, about lies and truth, about who is real and who is not, and about parents and children overpower this book, despite the fact that many of the passages in it are beautifully written. Still not sure about this book. Since I own it, I may take another look; it’s pleasurable to read and short enough to finish some summer evening.

[Ed · Rating 3 out of 5]

I admit to not having been aware of the tragic real-life story of Bruno Schulz, so I think much of the impact of this novel was lost on me. I read The Messiah of Stockholm as a standalone work of fiction, and therefore am evaluating it as such.

The prose is modern and accomplished, though there were sometimes odd little phrases that felt out of place. Actually, I had assumed while reading the novel that it had been written in another language, and these were attempts at literal translations that didn't quite work in English, but knowing now that the novel was actually written in English, I'm not sure what to make of these (sorry, I didn't highlight any examples). I suppose you could say that the writing is sometimes a little quirky.

I enjoyed the development of Lars's character, and his interactions with Heidi, in which many themes were explored: identity, cultural loss, belonging, art and imitation (echoes of The Recognitions here). This early part of the novel was quite good. There is an element of mystery and a hint perhaps of something sinister, which propels the plot. The resolution was not what I was expecting, and to be honest I found parts of it odd and somewhat disappointing, though I understand the resonances it could have with the historical context that the novel sets up.

There is more to it, but I feel that I largely missed the point of this book, and that I'm probably not qualified to review it properly, so take this for what it is.

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

She does more than just feed pages to the Schulz legend here. She is deft and subtle. She eats the eye of the progenitor, risking charges of appropriation or mere iconography. Ozick's irruption profits from being read immediately after Schulz, obvi: you feel the texture and smell of his corpus in her imagined Stockholm. The epistemological uncertainty that forms the central kernel of this work may not be new, but what is? Her prose is slick, precise. And her name-drops are on point. Yes, yes.

[S P · Rating 3 out of 5]

At three in the afternoon—the hour when, all over the world, the Literary stewpot boils over, when gossip in the book-reviewing departments of newspapers is most untamed and swarming, and when the autumn sky over Stockholm begins to draw down a translucent dusk (an eggshell shielding a blue-black yolk) across the spired and watery town—at this lachrymose yet exalted hour, Lars Andemening could be found in bed, napping. Not that there was anyone to look for him there.

The question that burns in Ozick's densely chimneyed Stockholm - what drives a man? Or specifically, what drives Lars Andermening when nobody is looking? A Polish-born orphan brought up in Sweden, Lars is the archetypal man of error: constantly misunderstood as a book reviewer, he writes a column for a middling Swedish newspaper which nobody reads. His speciality of books is dangerously brooding, consisting of obscure and existential Eastern European authors. Spiritually friendless, twice divorced and with his only daughter in America, there seems very little for Lars in Stockholm other than his obsession with these dated books. First and foremost, The Messiah of Stockholm is a salute to the literati; the few actual concrete settings within the novel's Stockholm are dedicated as temples for the written word: a newspaper office; a bookshop; the bedroom where Lars reads and writes his review, as well as the omnipresent aura of the Swedish Academy which lingers throughout the book [and perhaps functions as a high-brow Easter egg for the novel's readers]. The Messiah of Stockholm is a writer's book through and through, and because of its overall narrow focus on literature the book feels rather affected as such, intellectual but with the unshakeable feeling of being introverted. The Messiah of Stockholm doesn't make you fall in love with literature; you read The Messiah of Stockholm because you already do.

'She warned him that she wouldn’t allow her merchandise to look shopworn before sale; he was in plenty of trouble with her—she had been watching him turn the pages over; a hundred times. It was true. He had washed his fingers in that half-familiar dread print like a butcher with a bloody sheep in his grip, or like a tug dragging a river for a body.'

Thus this book of entelechy works on a tripartite system of literary drives: between the character's search for God, for his father, and for the author. Ozick pushes together these three universal usurping cerebral quests and uses them as the pistons for which the novel shrugs along. Lars is not only searching for meaning [and perhaps redemption] but he is equally obsessed by the combination of the author and father figure, here embodied through the history of Bruno Schulz. The Messiah of Stockholm is as much the story of Schulz as it is of Lars, and sewn within Lars' narrative are snippets of Schulz's writing and life whilst we the reader dip in and out of the domestic fabulism for which Schulz is renowned for, which seeps itself into Lars' slowly hallucinating mind. Thinking he is Schulz's long-lost son, he fixates over the details of Schulz's meagre literary output. Although never for elucidation because in Lars mind there can be no question as to his history. There is only faith: Schulz's word is holy - it is the law and passed down to him by default. Lars Andermening is Bruno Schulz. Ozick's natural oddness of writing comes from Schulz's weirdness of narrative: although the question of Lars' origins are questionable at best, he himself is haunted by the image of his supposed father - skeletal, moonlike, with his father's lone eye canonised in Lars' dreams. A father [or is it author?] who would have gone on to win the Nobel Prize, Lars proclaims rather feverishly at one point.

'Thus the stewpot in the early winter dark. Cigarette smoke like torn nets hanging. All over the world the great ladle was stirring, stirring.The poets, dreamers, thinkers, hacks. The ambitious and the meditative. The opportunists and the provocateurs. The cabalists and the seducers. This stewpot—these hot tides—Lars under a quilt a short walk away had shut out, week after week: for the sake of catching his father’s eye.'

Is Lars the messiah? Or is Bruno Schulz the metaphysical resurrected messiah? Or is it the mysterious appearance of Schulz' lost manuscript - incidentally titled The Messiah - which heralds a new testament for Lars lacklustre life. Ozick's short novel manages to be not only economical and linear to the point of exasperation, but it is within her mature construction of lines that we find such an intelligent complexity of philosophy as mentioned. The father-searching narrative is nothing new to literature but somehow Ozick adds to it with a clarity of an old, heavy sort of symbolism seemingly out of its time, turning the book into a psychoanalytical dream quite literally. Whilst the novel's prose is sparkling, The Messiah of Stockholm feels vaguely naturalistic. I do not know whether it is because of the novel's rather small and closed system, or the occasional distanced coldness of writing - especially when related to the characters - which makes this novel feel more like a philosophical experiment than a story. The novel appears to be one of Ozick - as the author, the father and the experimental maker - peering into the slow unravelling of Lars as his loathsomely paranoid character begins to ferment at the possibility of The Messiah's existence.

'"An impostor. Another refugee impostor. It’s nothing new, believe me! Half my customers have made themselves up. Fabricators. Every Pole of a certain age who walks in here, male or female, used to be famous professor in Warsaw. Every Hungarian was once ambassador to Argentina. The French are the worst. I’ve never had one of those in my shop who didn’t turn out to be just the one who got Sartre started on the Talmud. By now I’ve counted twenty-five female teachers of Talmud—poor Mlle. de Beauvoir"'

Unsurprisingly Lars' mind is a 'stewpot' of turmoil, torn apart from an underlying victim and messiah complex, which in turns elevates him to martyrdom. Not only is he an orphan, but he is also an exile, a mental refugee; Schulz's eventual death at the hands of Nazis seems to echo within Lars who is defined by such a persecution. [Although Lars is not explicitly Jewish, it is worth mentioning that Ozick quite famously is.] He is not merely Schulz's son, but he is the lost hope of Schulz winning the Nobel Prize, the lost pages of the manuscript, the paralysing and suffocating coldness of history and its apathy towards art and 'literary passion'. Consumed by this static reality he cannot handle the appearance of Adela, supposedly Schulz's long-lost daughter and thus Lars' step-sister, who brings into Lars' cold life the strange, found manuscript lest it skews his own plagiarised existence. He struggles between trying to disprove Adela's origins [and by consequence admitting to his own usurped flimsy foundations], or admitting to Adela's right to his story, one that he has found solace in for so long. The novel's rushed latter half becomes a quest in its literary detective capacity, where we where we begin to find out if Lars becomes condemned or saved by a manuscript which should not even exist in the first place. Although the plot may feel overall somewhat naturalistically contrived, and whilst Ozick does struggle when it comes to pacing and describing the dynamic external, the The Messiah of Stockholm is an admirable curious little thing, with enough rewards once you put in the effort.

[Old Man JP · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good humorous but occasionally slightly confusing story about a book reviewer named Lars Andemening. He is the Monday reviewer for a Stockholm newspaper which means he is at the bottom of the totem pole and doesn't even have his own desk. He was an orphan who never knew his parents and has convinced himself that his father was an obscure author named Bruno Schulz. The story revolves around an unpublished manuscript by Bruno and Lars interactions with a few very eccentric characters associated with the manuscript. Ozick is a brilliant wordsmith and puts together very clever sentences but, sometimes, her cleverness was too much for me and I couldn't follow the narration.

[Christine · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is not as good as The Shawl. Part of the reason is that there doesn't seem to be a sense of place. It feels like more of a setting for convince than an actually place.

What Ozick seems to be concerned with here, besides creative power, is the effect of a past you can't quite remember. Lars surived the war, but he doesn't know his father and he has no real idea who his father is. He is a refugee, but where does he really belong? It isn't guilt; it's a lack of connection. This might explain the lack of place, but it is a strange lack of place.

It's the lack of roots that make this tale compelling.

[Cassandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

She waxes a bit more poetic/philosophical in this than in the other stories I have read by her, and still leaves us with what felt like too short a tale. But with prose this goddamn flawless I am ok with that.

[sheereen · Rating 4 out of 5]

a book that does so much within its short page count. i loved the prose here — felt like the writing itself had a Mood and developed the main character’s sense of alienation, obsession, desperation. also lots to think about here re: faith, literature, a name…

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had a shaky start with this book, and ended really enjoying it. Based on a real-life lost manuscript of Polish writer, Bruno Schulz, murdered by the nazis, it explores lost identity, lost family and lost culture, and how those vacuums are filled. The holocaust is woven through the narrative, at times explicitly, at times in the drift of smoke from something roasting or on fire.

There's a progression from febrile unreality towards bland materiality, that in gaining, the main character, Lars Andemening, loses something.

Although by the book's end Andemening's trajectory has been from night into day, from private to consensus reality, there remains a thrill of the uncertain, the possibility that the fantastic, veiled and withdrawn, is still imminent, its potential to break through and disrupt still alive and ready to reclaim.

I'm glad that I persevered beyond the first 19 pages, and I'm inspired to seek out the surviving works of Schulz, which is one of the blessings of reading books inspired on the works of other writers.

[Pyrx · Rating 3 out of 5]

Главният герой Ларш Андеменинг работи във голям ежедневник, като единственото му задължение е да пише по една рецензия на книга в седмицата - за броя в понеделник.
Не е лоша служба, нали? Но трябват и много читатели на вестника!
Други двама негови колеги, описани с известна ирония, пишат също толкова за броевете в сряда и петък. Ларш има слабост към централно и източно европейски автори. Началникът му прави забележка, че неговите публикации приличат на богословски тиради.
Ларш е с неизяснен произход, и вярва, че е син на Бруно Шулц. Взема уроци по полски. Става дума, че Шулц е имал трета, неиздадена книга - "Месията", за която внезапно се оказва, че не е изгубена, но следите и минават през няколко странни личности.
Тази интрига създава интерес. Качеството на текста на Озик е високо, но истински смисъл не намерих. Темите са загатнати, но недостатъчно развити, освен ако аз не разбирам.
Сега се сещам за "Обреченият град" на Стругацки, там има повече месии.
Истинските качества на човека се проявяват, когато от него нещо зависи. На сухи интелектуалци трудно се дава оценка.
Тази книга е писана около 1980 г. Сега е още по-модерно да се използват знаменити имена, за да се привлече интерес от съвременни писатели.
Намерих си "Канелените магазини", но не ми се започва.

[Rosamund Taylor · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very strange novella! Lars, after two failed marriages, lives in a tiny flat in Stockholm, and works for a newspaper. It is 1980. He is an orphan and isn't in contact with his adoptive family. He was smuggled into safety in Sweden from Poland during WW2. His parents were probably Jewish. He believes his father was the author Bruno Schulz, who lived in Drohobycz and was shot by the Gestapo in 1942. He has no basis for this other than a resemblance he believes he sees. He immerses himself in Polish literature, learning Polish from an exiled Polish woman, and seeking all he can find about Bruno Schulz. He hopes to come across 'The Messiah,' a novel that Schulz completed, but which has never been found. The premise for this novella is interesting: Lars' background and the Swedish setting are interesting, and I liked the study of Schulz's life and literature. The plot, such as it is, didn't really come together for me, and the moments of tension were so drawn out that they fell flat. I was intrigued by this book, rather than enjoying it.

[Sam · Rating 5 out of 5]

sharply funny, absurd, prose that glints and cuts like a fresh-stropped knife. this is what “lyricism” should be. a small joyous riot

[Richard Seltzer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Intriguing tangle of lies or almost lies or truths disguised as lies.
Makes me want to reread The Street of Crocodiles by Bruno Schulz.

[Lysergius · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Messiah of Stockholm, is a witty literary tale set in Stockholm. The guiding light of the novel, is Polish writer Bruno Schulz. Schulz was killed during World War II, leaving behind only a few works.

The novel centres around Lars Andemening, forty-something and not much of a success in life. Twice married, a very minor figure in the literary world, book reviewer for one of Sweden's lesser dailies. A war refugee Lars was raised by a Swedish couple. He has convinced himself that his father was Bruno Schulz.

Schulz allegedly wrote a novel, The Messiah, before his death, but the manuscript was lost. One of Lars' acquaintances, bookstore owner, Heidi Eklund, brings the news one day that someone has approached her with the original manuscript of The Messiah.

The owner of the manuscript also claims to be a Schulz child. Mysteries abound - is the manuscript a forgery? Who is the mysterious woman bearing it, and why does she look so much like the bookstore owner's husband?

A book concerned with identity and literature, obsession and the mundane, how to find a place in life and how to live.

Thoroughly enjoyable.

[Masha Shollar · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been on a serious Ozick reading kick lately and this was as incredible as the rest of her work. Lars Andemening, a WWII refugee who has been living in Sweden for almost all of his life, is convinced he is the son of murdered Polish writer Bruno Schultz. A mysterious bookshop proprietress feeds his addiction, importing books, letters, and ephemera for him. Lars sees himself as not only a biological but ideological heir to his father, and feels a sense of responsibility to ensure he receives the fame that he deserved to get while alive. For any Schultz lovers interested in the alleged existence of The Messiah, this book reads both as a sort of wish-fulfillment and a sharp warning about the cost of fixating on dreams at the expense of real life. Throughout, the story ruminates on the entanglement of the self with works of literature -- and perhaps even cautions against losing oneself entirely in such obsessions. After all, who would know the dangers of losing your identity in a story better than a writer?

[Katherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The elevator was an inconvenience that could accommodate two persons, on condition that one of them was suitably skeletal" (10).
"There were heaps of books on every surface. The mice made an orderly meal of them, prefaces for appetizers and indexes for dessert" (10).
"It came of being partly Finnish on his mother's side--you wouldn't expect a sunny disposition in a Finn. 'Spits in his own soup,' Gunnar persisited" (12).
"O the chimneys of armpits, moist and burning under wool" (18).
"His rings blazed their sea-chest glints" (115).

[Leigh · Rating 1 out of 5]

I would not have picked this book up on my own, but it was my bookclub's selection for this month. I can't say that I enjoyed it overall. It tends to ramble, and becomes more wordy than necessary, causing the flow of the story to slow. The one thing I did enjoy was the author's use of language, and creativity...I just wish there had been more meat to the story. I found the book rather lacking by the end.

[Spencer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Terrific--Cynthia Ozick can do it all. Snappy dialogue that's witty but not artificial, wry humor, language at once gorgeous and disturbing, indelible characters, a perfect sense of rhythm and mood. She treats sentimentality and despair with equal amounts of skepticism. The story loses steam at the climax, but if you're a fan of Nabokov or A.S. Byatt's Possession, Ozick may be your next favorite author.

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

Although this book is only 144 pages (in hardback), it reads like it is much longer. This is not a good thing. Ultimately, I think the problem is that the main character (a book reviewer) and location (Stockholm) are not terribly exciting.

The book does make me want to read Bruno Schulz -- the real life author killed by the Nazis in Poland whose lost manuscript plays a part in the novel.

[Lili · Rating 1 out of 5]

waste of time

[Ananda · Rating 1 out of 5]

Very unimpressive.

[Stuart · Rating 1 out of 5]

Too much waffle and tries too hard to be literary. Shame.