What do you think?
Rate this book
The Ministry of Special Cases
In the heart of Argentina’s Dirty War, Kaddish Poznan struggles with a son who won’t accept him; strives for a wife who forever saves him; and spends his nights protecting the good name of a community that denies his existence--and denies a checkered history that only Kaddish holds dear.
The long-awaited novel from Nathan Englander, author of For the Relief of Unbearable Urges. Englander’s wondrous and much-heralded collection of stories won the 2000 Pen/Malamud Award and was translated into more than a dozen languages.
From its unforgettable opening scene in the darkness of a forgotten cemetery in Buenos Aires, The Ministry of Special Cases casts a powerful spell. In the heart of Argentina’s Dirty War, Kaddish Poznan struggles with a son who won’t accept him; strives for a wife who forever saves him; and spends his nights protecting the good name of a community that denies his existence--and denies a checkered history that only Kaddish holds dear. When the nightmare of the disappeared children brings the Poznan family to its knees, they are thrust into the unyielding corridors of the Ministry of Special Cases, the refuge of last resort.
Nathan Englander’s first novel is a timeless story of fathers and sons. In a world turned upside down, where the past and the future, the nature of truth itself, all take shape according to a corrupt government’s whims, one man--one spectacularly hopeless man--fights to overcome his history and his name, and, if for only once in his life, to put things right. Here again are all the marvelous qualities for which Englander’s first book was immediately beloved: his exuberant wit and invention, his cosmic sense of the absurd, his genius for balancing joyfulness and despair. Through the devastation of a single family, Englander captures, indelibly, the grief of a nation. The Ministry of Special Cases, like Englander’s stories before it, is a celebration of our humanity, in all its weakness, and--despite that--hope.
The long-awaited novel from Nathan Englander, author of For the Relief of Unbearable Urges. Englander’s wondrous and much-heralded collection of stories won the 2000 Pen/Malamud Award and was translated into more than a dozen languages.
From its unforgettable opening scene in the darkness of a forgotten cemetery in Buenos Aires, The Ministry of Special Cases casts a powerful spell. In the heart of Argentina’s Dirty War, Kaddish Poznan struggles with a son who won’t accept him; strives for a wife who forever saves him; and spends his nights protecting the good name of a community that denies his existence--and denies a checkered history that only Kaddish holds dear. When the nightmare of the disappeared children brings the Poznan family to its knees, they are thrust into the unyielding corridors of the Ministry of Special Cases, the refuge of last resort.
Nathan Englander’s first novel is a timeless story of fathers and sons. In a world turned upside down, where the past and the future, the nature of truth itself, all take shape according to a corrupt government’s whims, one man--one spectacularly hopeless man--fights to overcome his history and his name, and, if for only once in his life, to put things right. Here again are all the marvelous qualities for which Englander’s first book was immediately beloved: his exuberant wit and invention, his cosmic sense of the absurd, his genius for balancing joyfulness and despair. Through the devastation of a single family, Englander captures, indelibly, the grief of a nation. The Ministry of Special Cases, like Englander’s stories before it, is a celebration of our humanity, in all its weakness, and--despite that--hope.
339 pages, Hardcover
First published November 17, 2007
147 people are currently reading
3089 people want to read
About the author
Nathan Englander
47 books405 followersNathan Englander is a Jewish-American author born in Long Island, NY in 1970. He wrote the short story collection, For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., in 1999. The volume won widespread critical acclaim, earning Englander the 2000 PEN/Faulkner Malamud Award and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Sue Kauffman Prize, and established him as an important writer of fiction.
Learn more on Facebook.
Learn more on Facebook.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 481 reviews
June 26, 2025
The Story Of Kadish Poznan
Set in Buenos Aires, Argentina during the "Dirty War" of 1976, "The Ministry of Special Cases"(2007) tells a complex story of parent-child relationships, loss, and political treachery. It is the first novel of the American writer Nathan Englander, who was raised in an Orthodox Jewish home but subsequently abandoned Orthodoxy. Englander's book describes aspects of the Jewish immigrant experience that will be unfamiliar to many people. With the large Jewish immigration from Eastern Europe to the Americas from the late 19th through the early 20th Century came certain criminal elements. It included pimps and prostitutes, including women forced into the profession and women who took to it willingly. When this sort of activity became notorious in large cities, most Jews distanced themselves from and fought it. They were morally strongly opposed in their own right and they also did not want to be tarnished by vice in the eyes of the larger society. The larger Jewish community could not entirely disown their "unclean ones" in death. Cemeteries in which pimps, prostitutes, cadets, and their associated hangers-on were buried were established separate from the Jewish cemeteries for the law-abiding community. This was done in some United States cities and elsewhere, including Buenos Aires.
In Buenos Aires, the Jewish community established a separate cemetery for its criminal element. The division between the mainline Jewish community and the prostitutes and pimps (who were essentially a memory by mid-century) is critical to Englander's story. The major character in the novel, Kaddish Poznan, was the unplanned result of a commercial encounter between a Jewish prostitute, Favorita, and an unknown client. The community Rabbi, standing at the threshold of Favorita's brothel, gave the newborn baby the name "Kaddish" after the Jewish prayer for the dead and the surname, "Poznan" after a Jewish legend which teaches that "a man's offspring through a prostitute will come to no good." (p. 8) In this book, Kaddish Poznan remains an outcast from the Jewish community and from larger Buenos Aires. His schemes to improve his lot and make money generally come to nothing.
As a young man, Kaddish meets a woman, Lilian, from the mainstream Jewish community, and the two fall in love and marry. Lillian generally has the burden of supporting the family through her work for an insurance agency given the difficulties that Kaddish has in finding work. The couple have an only child, a son, Pato, who when the book opens is 19 and studying at college. As is the way of young people, Pato is rebellious and does not get along well with his father. Kaddish's trade, at which he makes some money, is sneaking into the abandoned cemetery for the Jewish pimps and prostitutes and erasing the names from their headstones which have become an embarassment and, in the troubled world of Argentina, a possible threat, to their successful offspring, including, in this novel, a renowned plastic surgeon.
With this complex and fascinating background, the story adds another level in the context of the terror that gripped Argentina with the military junta of 1976. After some stage-setting, Pato is carried off by the Junta's thugs setting the course for the rest of the book. Kaddish and Lilian are distraught, as are many other residents of Buenos Aires whose loved ones have disappeared. They search valiantly for their son. In the process, the novel takes on a surreal, horrifying character as Englander describes the regime and its terror. During their search, Kaddish and Lilian visit a ministry for "Special Cases" and experience the faceless and unfathomable bureaucracy. The novel takes them many other places and introduces many other characters as the junta is revealed slowly through indirection. Englander introduces brutal police, an Argentinian general, an individual who pushes political prisoners from planes into the river, a corrupt priest, a rather complacent leader of the Buenos Aires Jewish community, the rabbi who spurned Kaddish at his birth and gave him his name (who receives a sympathetic portrayal as the novel unfolds) and many other characters that cast light on the story in the attempt to find Pato. Kaddish Poznan seems to me the most heroic and the central character of this story. He is pessimistic and throughout shows his background of petty crime. Lillian is more optimistic and has difficulty accepting what appears to be Pato's fate. Kaddish and Lilian grow apart as a result of the tragedy.
The attempts at humor in this book tend, to me, to be heavy-handed and to detract from the novel. Much of the symbolism, and the apparent attempt to make the story a parable for the nature of Jewish identity also seem to me forced and unconvincing. With these reservations, I found this a thoughtful, moving and worthwhile novel. I was glad to see this portrayal of a portion of Jewish history that for understandable reasons receives little attention. Kaddish, on the whole, is a sympathetic character. My impression is that he, and the world from which he came, holds the author's heart and convincingly so. The portrayal of the junta and its terrors is for all its surrealism realistic and unnerving. Englander captures and explains the tension between Kaddish and his young, alienated son. The complex story reads quickly, is paced with great skill, and is beautifully written.
Even though it has features which ordinarily would result in my downgrading a book substantially, this novel's virtues far outweigh its deficiencies. I became involved in the story and thought about it, and the fallen Jewish community of Buenos Aires in particular, long after I finished reading. I rate the book highly because of the impact it had on me and most likely will have on other readers.
Robin Friedman
Set in Buenos Aires, Argentina during the "Dirty War" of 1976, "The Ministry of Special Cases"(2007) tells a complex story of parent-child relationships, loss, and political treachery. It is the first novel of the American writer Nathan Englander, who was raised in an Orthodox Jewish home but subsequently abandoned Orthodoxy. Englander's book describes aspects of the Jewish immigrant experience that will be unfamiliar to many people. With the large Jewish immigration from Eastern Europe to the Americas from the late 19th through the early 20th Century came certain criminal elements. It included pimps and prostitutes, including women forced into the profession and women who took to it willingly. When this sort of activity became notorious in large cities, most Jews distanced themselves from and fought it. They were morally strongly opposed in their own right and they also did not want to be tarnished by vice in the eyes of the larger society. The larger Jewish community could not entirely disown their "unclean ones" in death. Cemeteries in which pimps, prostitutes, cadets, and their associated hangers-on were buried were established separate from the Jewish cemeteries for the law-abiding community. This was done in some United States cities and elsewhere, including Buenos Aires.
In Buenos Aires, the Jewish community established a separate cemetery for its criminal element. The division between the mainline Jewish community and the prostitutes and pimps (who were essentially a memory by mid-century) is critical to Englander's story. The major character in the novel, Kaddish Poznan, was the unplanned result of a commercial encounter between a Jewish prostitute, Favorita, and an unknown client. The community Rabbi, standing at the threshold of Favorita's brothel, gave the newborn baby the name "Kaddish" after the Jewish prayer for the dead and the surname, "Poznan" after a Jewish legend which teaches that "a man's offspring through a prostitute will come to no good." (p. 8) In this book, Kaddish Poznan remains an outcast from the Jewish community and from larger Buenos Aires. His schemes to improve his lot and make money generally come to nothing.
As a young man, Kaddish meets a woman, Lilian, from the mainstream Jewish community, and the two fall in love and marry. Lillian generally has the burden of supporting the family through her work for an insurance agency given the difficulties that Kaddish has in finding work. The couple have an only child, a son, Pato, who when the book opens is 19 and studying at college. As is the way of young people, Pato is rebellious and does not get along well with his father. Kaddish's trade, at which he makes some money, is sneaking into the abandoned cemetery for the Jewish pimps and prostitutes and erasing the names from their headstones which have become an embarassment and, in the troubled world of Argentina, a possible threat, to their successful offspring, including, in this novel, a renowned plastic surgeon.
With this complex and fascinating background, the story adds another level in the context of the terror that gripped Argentina with the military junta of 1976. After some stage-setting, Pato is carried off by the Junta's thugs setting the course for the rest of the book. Kaddish and Lilian are distraught, as are many other residents of Buenos Aires whose loved ones have disappeared. They search valiantly for their son. In the process, the novel takes on a surreal, horrifying character as Englander describes the regime and its terror. During their search, Kaddish and Lilian visit a ministry for "Special Cases" and experience the faceless and unfathomable bureaucracy. The novel takes them many other places and introduces many other characters as the junta is revealed slowly through indirection. Englander introduces brutal police, an Argentinian general, an individual who pushes political prisoners from planes into the river, a corrupt priest, a rather complacent leader of the Buenos Aires Jewish community, the rabbi who spurned Kaddish at his birth and gave him his name (who receives a sympathetic portrayal as the novel unfolds) and many other characters that cast light on the story in the attempt to find Pato. Kaddish Poznan seems to me the most heroic and the central character of this story. He is pessimistic and throughout shows his background of petty crime. Lillian is more optimistic and has difficulty accepting what appears to be Pato's fate. Kaddish and Lilian grow apart as a result of the tragedy.
The attempts at humor in this book tend, to me, to be heavy-handed and to detract from the novel. Much of the symbolism, and the apparent attempt to make the story a parable for the nature of Jewish identity also seem to me forced and unconvincing. With these reservations, I found this a thoughtful, moving and worthwhile novel. I was glad to see this portrayal of a portion of Jewish history that for understandable reasons receives little attention. Kaddish, on the whole, is a sympathetic character. My impression is that he, and the world from which he came, holds the author's heart and convincingly so. The portrayal of the junta and its terrors is for all its surrealism realistic and unnerving. Englander captures and explains the tension between Kaddish and his young, alienated son. The complex story reads quickly, is paced with great skill, and is beautifully written.
Even though it has features which ordinarily would result in my downgrading a book substantially, this novel's virtues far outweigh its deficiencies. I became involved in the story and thought about it, and the fallen Jewish community of Buenos Aires in particular, long after I finished reading. I rate the book highly because of the impact it had on me and most likely will have on other readers.
Robin Friedman
August 3, 2008
Problematic. Englander is an adept, even-handed writer, but not an amazing stylist; worse, I never believed that the story was set in Argentina at all (it would have been better as a Kafka-esque "no place"), and I didn't find it as engaging as I would have hoped. But a good effort nonetheless.
Upon rereading, I was struck by many of the scenes but underwhelmed by the lack of cohesion - the whole was less than the sum of its parts.
Upon rereading, I was struck by many of the scenes but underwhelmed by the lack of cohesion - the whole was less than the sum of its parts.
April 8, 2019
Come si dice desaparecidos in ebraico?
Un punto di vista insolito: la tragedia argentina dei desaparecidos vista attraverso gli occhi di due genitori di religione ebraica.
La ricerca di un figlio svanito nel nulla e le diverse sfaccettature del dolore: l'incredulità, la rassegnazione, la negazione.
E poi la diversità, la famiglia, la religione, la politica, la violenza, l'amore: tutto dentro al Ministero dei Casi Speciali e nelle strade e nelle case di Buenos Aires.
Un punto di vista insolito: la tragedia argentina dei desaparecidos vista attraverso gli occhi di due genitori di religione ebraica.
La ricerca di un figlio svanito nel nulla e le diverse sfaccettature del dolore: l'incredulità, la rassegnazione, la negazione.
E poi la diversità, la famiglia, la religione, la politica, la violenza, l'amore: tutto dentro al Ministero dei Casi Speciali e nelle strade e nelle case di Buenos Aires.
April 6, 2020
Didn't really care for the book/writing style. The redeeming value was what was going on in Argentina in the 1970s, with the government turning against its own people and causing them to "disappear". Picked this up as a used CD to listen while I drive. Wouldn't recommend.
January 19, 2020
Kako je ovo moćna knjiga.
January 18, 2009
I have been interested in “the disappeared” (Los Desaparecidos ) of Argentina since I visited that country in the mid-90ies several times and saw the mothers marching in the Plaza de Mayo in front of the Casa Rosada (pink house, president’s residence and seat of government). That’s what drew me to this book.
The setting is Buenos Aires in 1976. The main characters are Kaddish Poznan and his wife, Lillian. They are not only Jewish, but Kaddish is literally a hijo de puta (son of a whore) and his “job” is defacing gravestones in the Jewish cemetery for whores and pimps for their descendents who want to erase their past, free their identity from the stain of their ancestors. And erasing the past and transforming identity are major themes in the novel. Lillian is a more conventional Jew, belonging to the “respectable” Jewish congregation. She works for an insurance agent, actually the main support of the family. Kaddish and Lillian have a son, Pato, who’s a university student. Kaddish and Pato battle constantly. On the day that Pato is arrested, Kaddish in his fury tells his son he wishes he’d never been born.
Kaddish and Lillian are both devastated at the arrest of their son, especially as they realize no official of the government will admit that Pato is even in custody or in fact ever existed. They handle their grief and frustration so entirely differently that the conflict between them deepens. Lillian assumes there are government channels one has to go through to get information. She soon knows every police station in the city intimately and sits every day at the Ministry of Special Cases hoping for a hearing. Kaddish’s strategy is less straightforward. In one of the more hilarious (in a book that’s basically painfully tragic) incidents of the book, before his son disappears, Kaddish is owed money by a plastic surgeon whose family graves he has “disappeared”. The doctor convinces him to accept payment in kind and Kaddish negotiates nose jobs for himself, Lillian and Pato. Pato refuses—not wanting to change his identity. Kaddish volunteers to go first and gets a first rate job; Lillian, whom he was trying to protect by going first, gets an intern and her new nose falls off and has to be redone—which Kaddish manages to badger the doctor into doing. Changing the nose, especially for a Jew, is tantamount to changing identity; Lillian, who is now beautiful, is devastated when a policeman to whom she shows a picture of her son, says it can’t be her son with that big nose.
A Kaddish is a prayer in the Jewish liturgy and the term is especially associated with a prayer of mourning. Both the history of Argentina of this period and Kaddish’s name warn the reader that Pato will never be found alive. Students and intellectuals were targeted by the regime and most often “disappeared”. Kaddish eventually encounters a navigator who, full of guilt in his role, tells him how the regime disposes of the disappeared, pushing them out of airplanes into the river delta. That convinces Kaddish that Pato is dead, but when he goes to the rabbi to arrange a funeral, it seems that Jewish practice doesn’t allow that without a body. Lillian throws him out because he won’t keep the faith that Pato is alive and coming back. She has met a priest roaming the Ministry of Special Cases who tells her that a great amount of money can buy information about the disappeared and sometimes even a release. Pato, not believing in her solution but realizing he can’t live her lie and can’t live without her goes back to the plastic surgeon who advises him to kidnap someone himself and demand a ransome. That Kaddish’s conscience cannot tolerate but he can “ply his trade” and steal the bones of a prominent family from the famous Recoleta cemetery [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Recol...] and hold those for ransome…
This novel was not entirely successful. The marriage of Jewish tradition and Argentinean history of the 1970ies just doesn’t work. The saga of a disappeared son is too painful to be contemplated, and Englander doesn’t succeed completely moving the reader from the literal events to the larger concepts he seems to be trying for. There is no ending to Pato’s story—the mothers still march in the Plaza de Mayo (which practice is not, by the way, featured in the novel)—as the reader knows neither he nor his body will be found and that tragedy trumps all the richness and the humor of Kaddish and Lillian’s story.
The setting is Buenos Aires in 1976. The main characters are Kaddish Poznan and his wife, Lillian. They are not only Jewish, but Kaddish is literally a hijo de puta (son of a whore) and his “job” is defacing gravestones in the Jewish cemetery for whores and pimps for their descendents who want to erase their past, free their identity from the stain of their ancestors. And erasing the past and transforming identity are major themes in the novel. Lillian is a more conventional Jew, belonging to the “respectable” Jewish congregation. She works for an insurance agent, actually the main support of the family. Kaddish and Lillian have a son, Pato, who’s a university student. Kaddish and Pato battle constantly. On the day that Pato is arrested, Kaddish in his fury tells his son he wishes he’d never been born.
Kaddish and Lillian are both devastated at the arrest of their son, especially as they realize no official of the government will admit that Pato is even in custody or in fact ever existed. They handle their grief and frustration so entirely differently that the conflict between them deepens. Lillian assumes there are government channels one has to go through to get information. She soon knows every police station in the city intimately and sits every day at the Ministry of Special Cases hoping for a hearing. Kaddish’s strategy is less straightforward. In one of the more hilarious (in a book that’s basically painfully tragic) incidents of the book, before his son disappears, Kaddish is owed money by a plastic surgeon whose family graves he has “disappeared”. The doctor convinces him to accept payment in kind and Kaddish negotiates nose jobs for himself, Lillian and Pato. Pato refuses—not wanting to change his identity. Kaddish volunteers to go first and gets a first rate job; Lillian, whom he was trying to protect by going first, gets an intern and her new nose falls off and has to be redone—which Kaddish manages to badger the doctor into doing. Changing the nose, especially for a Jew, is tantamount to changing identity; Lillian, who is now beautiful, is devastated when a policeman to whom she shows a picture of her son, says it can’t be her son with that big nose.
A Kaddish is a prayer in the Jewish liturgy and the term is especially associated with a prayer of mourning. Both the history of Argentina of this period and Kaddish’s name warn the reader that Pato will never be found alive. Students and intellectuals were targeted by the regime and most often “disappeared”. Kaddish eventually encounters a navigator who, full of guilt in his role, tells him how the regime disposes of the disappeared, pushing them out of airplanes into the river delta. That convinces Kaddish that Pato is dead, but when he goes to the rabbi to arrange a funeral, it seems that Jewish practice doesn’t allow that without a body. Lillian throws him out because he won’t keep the faith that Pato is alive and coming back. She has met a priest roaming the Ministry of Special Cases who tells her that a great amount of money can buy information about the disappeared and sometimes even a release. Pato, not believing in her solution but realizing he can’t live her lie and can’t live without her goes back to the plastic surgeon who advises him to kidnap someone himself and demand a ransome. That Kaddish’s conscience cannot tolerate but he can “ply his trade” and steal the bones of a prominent family from the famous Recoleta cemetery [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Recol...] and hold those for ransome…
This novel was not entirely successful. The marriage of Jewish tradition and Argentinean history of the 1970ies just doesn’t work. The saga of a disappeared son is too painful to be contemplated, and Englander doesn’t succeed completely moving the reader from the literal events to the larger concepts he seems to be trying for. There is no ending to Pato’s story—the mothers still march in the Plaza de Mayo (which practice is not, by the way, featured in the novel)—as the reader knows neither he nor his body will be found and that tragedy trumps all the richness and the humor of Kaddish and Lillian’s story.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 27, 2020
Surprise! Surprise! What life throws at you cannot be understood. There is no logic or reason to what happens. At best, all you can do is try to accommodate yourself to the cards dealt you.
More specifically the book concerned one Jewish family and what happened to them during Argentina's Dirty Wars of the late 70s and early 80s. How do you deal with loss? What happens when husband and wife, who do love each other, respond differently. Love does not necessarily mean two people react in the same manner. I particularly liked following this book as an audiobook. With an audiobook every sentence is read slowly, allowing the reader/listener to ponder both the obvious and more subtle meanings behind the words. Most every sentence in this novel could be interpreted on different levels - one level being the obvious event and the other the philosophical message. THIS is what I appreciated most with the book - not necessarily where the plot started and ended.
Rather than learning about the political details of the Dirty Wars, the reader learns how it felt to live through them. How was it for the ordinary people of Argentina.
And there is subtle humor:
"Those people can't be bought with a cookie." or
"They are all in the same boat. But they have no boat! They are all at the bottom of the river."
(Sorry, I cannot give the page numbers, since this was an audiobook.)
More specifically the book concerned one Jewish family and what happened to them during Argentina's Dirty Wars of the late 70s and early 80s. How do you deal with loss? What happens when husband and wife, who do love each other, respond differently. Love does not necessarily mean two people react in the same manner. I particularly liked following this book as an audiobook. With an audiobook every sentence is read slowly, allowing the reader/listener to ponder both the obvious and more subtle meanings behind the words. Most every sentence in this novel could be interpreted on different levels - one level being the obvious event and the other the philosophical message. THIS is what I appreciated most with the book - not necessarily where the plot started and ended.
Rather than learning about the political details of the Dirty Wars, the reader learns how it felt to live through them. How was it for the ordinary people of Argentina.
And there is subtle humor:
"Those people can't be bought with a cookie." or
"They are all in the same boat. But they have no boat! They are all at the bottom of the river."
(Sorry, I cannot give the page numbers, since this was an audiobook.)
December 23, 2008
Nathan Enlgander's account of a family ensnared in their own roots and the aftermath of a coup in unstable 70s Buenos Aires (the "dirty war") seems undecided about the story it wants to tell. In character and early plotting, Englander's tone is light and amusing, his plotting quirky and occassionally implausible. Through the headstone alterations and dubious rhinoplasties, though, the bleak historical realities of the era -- disappeared families and political terror -- gradually seep up to engulf the story. The horrifying truths that emerge are suitably horrifying, and lend the tale much of its meaning and weight, but by the time they arrive mark such an about-face in tone that they're almost hard to take in. I suppose this was partly intentional, and that Englander wanted to make them bite all the more harshly for being unexpected, but instead the two sides of the story are left at odds, the lighter undermining the serious and robbing the characters of the full pathos their tales deserve. This is not to say that absurdity and deadly realism cannot coexist (as in some possitively Kafka-esque bureaucracy sequences), but that juggling them takes a defter touch than the novel is usually able to summon.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 19, 2007
Like Chabon's "The Yiddish Policemen's Union," this is the tale of hard-boiled Jewish protagonist trying to make sense of a world that is rapidly deteriorating around him. But while Chabon went for affect and genre mimicry, Englander goes for a more soulful approach—the results are both more sober and more satisfying. Yet, Englander's book is far from perfect. There's not a whole lot going on during a long central act, and uninterrupted anguish can be as numbing as riveting. For a book in which time and place are so important—Buenos Aires, 1978, at the height of the junta's murderous campaign against its own citizens—the city itself remains strangely opaque. It's a setting, but not a living, breathing place.
At his best, Englander conveys the horror of the period with tremendous power and respect, eschewing sensationalism for grim restraint. A short, stand-alone chapter on a young girl who is one of the many victims of the government's atrocities is the book's high point, as Englander delivers a book-length narrative in a mere three pages that proves twice as effective as his longer work.
At his best, Englander conveys the horror of the period with tremendous power and respect, eschewing sensationalism for grim restraint. A short, stand-alone chapter on a young girl who is one of the many victims of the government's atrocities is the book's high point, as Englander delivers a book-length narrative in a mere three pages that proves twice as effective as his longer work.
September 1, 2007
As I just finished this, it may take me a while to process my exact thoughts. There isn't a lot of florid description here of Argentina in the 70s or the Jewish community of Buenos Aires at that time, and yet the author still managed to make both these seem very present, despite never being wholly unveiled at any one point.
The protagonist is a pariah, neither at home in his community nor outside of it, and he is deeply troubled and morally defiant about it. A similar struggle marks the more intimate relationship with his son -- it's angry and intense, askew and connected, painful and turbulent, but it has a core of real though misexpressed love and familial longing. I'm struck by the author's ability to convey this complex relationship so well even at times when it's not explicitly being discussed.
For the first time in a while, I was utterly emotionally involved the character's experiences. A passage where Lillian disintegrates -- figuratively and literally -- will haunt me for a long time. It's dark, dark comedy and terrifying at the same time.
To make odious comparisons, this book is like Malamud's The Assistant coupled with Kafka. Deep, complicated emotions at times of high desperation and tragicomic mania greeted by an opaque, polite, insidious, and very sinister system.
The protagonist is a pariah, neither at home in his community nor outside of it, and he is deeply troubled and morally defiant about it. A similar struggle marks the more intimate relationship with his son -- it's angry and intense, askew and connected, painful and turbulent, but it has a core of real though misexpressed love and familial longing. I'm struck by the author's ability to convey this complex relationship so well even at times when it's not explicitly being discussed.
For the first time in a while, I was utterly emotionally involved the character's experiences. A passage where Lillian disintegrates -- figuratively and literally -- will haunt me for a long time. It's dark, dark comedy and terrifying at the same time.
To make odious comparisons, this book is like Malamud's The Assistant coupled with Kafka. Deep, complicated emotions at times of high desperation and tragicomic mania greeted by an opaque, polite, insidious, and very sinister system.
did-not-finish
September 28, 2013Since I enjoyed Englander's first short-story collection, For the Relief of Unbearable Urges (his works have great titles), I decided to try his novel before reading his next collection, What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank: Stories.
Either the style of this novel is different from his stories I read (some of which I do remember though it's been awhile), or his style is not conducive to a novel, because I'm not interested in reading beyond the ninety-something pages I did read, though I thought the material held promise.
Take this review with a grain of salt, though, for what I found boring, you might find comic.
Either the style of this novel is different from his stories I read (some of which I do remember though it's been awhile), or his style is not conducive to a novel, because I'm not interested in reading beyond the ninety-something pages I did read, though I thought the material held promise.
Take this review with a grain of salt, though, for what I found boring, you might find comic.
July 11, 2021
This is an uneasy book about a terrible subject. So why read it?
This is what I asked myself at the bottom of page 1 and again more urgently around 30 pages in.
ME is such a skillful writer that it soon became evident that I could not stop and that, like them or not, I had bonded with the rough characters that were going to break my heart.
Dates are given, names spelled out, but terror is out of time and the specific tragedies that befall those in its trajectory are universal. A study in the nuances of humiliation and devotion, unsentimental and with the blunt eloquence of a participant this is a story of particular relevance for those of us alarmed for the future of democracy.
So i read this book as a witness and as a caution and allowed myself to follow and almost understand. The dialogue is searing, the outcome something against which the reader may be braced but can't help but cry out, astonished and helpless.
This is what I asked myself at the bottom of page 1 and again more urgently around 30 pages in.
ME is such a skillful writer that it soon became evident that I could not stop and that, like them or not, I had bonded with the rough characters that were going to break my heart.
Dates are given, names spelled out, but terror is out of time and the specific tragedies that befall those in its trajectory are universal. A study in the nuances of humiliation and devotion, unsentimental and with the blunt eloquence of a participant this is a story of particular relevance for those of us alarmed for the future of democracy.
So i read this book as a witness and as a caution and allowed myself to follow and almost understand. The dialogue is searing, the outcome something against which the reader may be braced but can't help but cry out, astonished and helpless.
November 7, 2025
In 1976 Kaddish and Lillian Poznan's 19-year-old son Pato has been disappeared in Argentina's "dirty war." A friend of the family tells Kaddish:
"This disappearing is an evolutionary refinement, a political variant to an industry Argentina has always held dear. It's the junta that destroyed the kidnapping trade. They think they're idealists, and evil always follows when people stop taking cash. It's a capitalist truism. Beware when your leaders can't be bought. If they really were ransoming Pato, I'd give a sigh of relief."
It reminded me of something Noam Chomsky said in the late 90s:
"Actually, I think that the United States has been in kind of a pre-fascist mood for years--and we've been lucky that every leader who's come along has been a crook. See, people should always be very much in favor of corruption - I'm not kidding about that. Corruption's a very good thing, because it undermines power. I mean, if we get some Jim Bakker coming along, you know, this preacher who was caught sleeping with everybody and defrauding his followers - those guys are fine: all they want is money and sex and ripping people off, so they're never going to cause much trouble. Or take Nixon, say: an obvious crook, he's ultimately not going to cause that much of a problem. But if somebody shows up who's kind of a Hitler-type--just wants power, no corruption, straight, makes it all sound appealing, and says, 'We want power'--well, then we'll all be in very bad trouble. Now, we haven't had the right person yet in the United States, but sooner or later somebody's going to fill that position--and if so, it will be highly dangerous." (quoted in Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky)
April 18, 2014
In “The Ministry of Special Cases”, Nathan Englander revisits the Dirty War, the Argentine military junta’s broad and brutal overreaction to a series of kidnaps and murders by leftists. Despite the very particular historical period and the even tighter focus on a single Jewish family, Englander manages somehow in this novel to detail the most deeply personal tragedy but also to evoke larger questions about the bonds of family, of bystanders’ responsibility, of truth and governmental cover-up, of identity—personal, ethnic, class, religious and national, and, above all, of loss. The family at the center of the novel is composed of: a working class father not far from the underworld of his forbears (he is literally, in a joke that appears all too frequently, an hijo de puta) with the improbable name of Kadish Posnan; his wife, Lillian, of better-heeled stock, who works in an insurance office that thrives off the insecurity of the generals and judges; and their son Pablo, known as Pato, a university student like many others, a reader who broods, quarrels with his father, goes to concerts, smokes marijuana, and talks naively about politics. It is Pato’s misfortune, and that of the entire Posnan family, to live under a government so confident of its own virtue and intolerant of anyone who might appear to differ that it converts “disappeared” into a plural noun and invents the phrase “to disappear” someone. The search of Kadish and Lillian for Pato, first together, then apart, is heartbreak itself, as they rebound from the ministry of the title to a rabbi, a priest, a general and his wife, a plastic surgeon, the thugs employed in police stations, and, most chilling, one of those who do the ugly work of disappearing. We now know, as Englander details, that many if not all of the disappeared were dropped alive from airplanes into the sea. That is an almost unbearable weight for any novel to carry, so Englander leavens it by doses of mordant Jewish humor. He also adds vibrant dialogue, sharp observation of characters and a unique sense of place, from the general’s house to the ministry to the old Jewish cemetery where Kadish plies his unique trade, chiseling the names of now respectable families from the tombs of their gangster forbears (people with names like One-Eye and Toothless). Englander even manages the virtuosic feat of writing English dialogue that credibly stands in for Spanish, evoking the thin and savage politeness of the general and his wife, officious bureaucratese, and the Jewish-inflected speech of Kadish and the rabbi. There are occasional falls from grace – it is hard to conceive of an Argentine student in the 70s saying “no worries.” But those lapses are rare and they do nothing to keep the narrative from gathering force until its shattering final sections. Auden’s perception in “Musee de Beaux Arts” rings true once more. The suffering of others does not often touch us, does not distract us from the thousand daily tasks, especially when it occurs far away, so no one notices how in the distance a boy falls from the sky and breaks the plane of water. No one but his parents. And so it happens that one of the architects of the campaign of murder, Gen. Galtieri, was praised by the Reagan administration for anti-communism. (He was later disowned, not for having children murdered, but for invading the Falklands). Not all of the disappeared were innocent, it is clear in retrospect, but none of them were found guilty in a court of law. At least, like his predecessor General Viola, Galtieri died in disgrace. And the first of the junta leaders, perhaps the most guilty architect of the Dirty War, General Videla, died in prison. But none of them showed any contrition, any pity, except for themselves as they died in old age of chronic diseases.
August 28, 2011
My rating "didn't like it" doesn't mean I think this is not a well-written, perhaps even a brilliant, book. I just couldn't take it. The combination of Jewish humor/style and the horror of the Peron regime in Argentina was simply too much for me. The books is about a hundred kinds of disappearances. It begins with "disappearing" the names of the disreputable Jews in an Argentinian cemetery. This is Kaddish's job. He is a prostitute's son and works chipping away at the names (and therefore family reputations) in the "wrong" side of the cemetery.
What really made it impossible for me to read this book were the arguments between Kaddish and his son, the college educated, rock afficionado, stoner Pato. The arguments were so raw and awful and believable. I felt sick every time I read another scene between these two. And then, they're over. Because Pato has been disappeared. And still the humor continues. The ridiculous bureaucracy, the awful interactions. I just couldn't bear it. Something about the juxtaposition of these two genres--Jewish humor and political atrocity--was too hard for me. So my rating of the book doesn't mean I don't think it's perhaps a valuable book; I just know I can't read it cover to cover.
But I went back to it. I finished in small doses. And the writing IS brilliant. Just so much corruption and longing and torture--all told in these beautifully wrought, darkly humorous sentences. I admire Englander enormously, and I don't want to live in or visit his worlds. As we say, the discipline of the book club kept me going.
What really made it impossible for me to read this book were the arguments between Kaddish and his son, the college educated, rock afficionado, stoner Pato. The arguments were so raw and awful and believable. I felt sick every time I read another scene between these two. And then, they're over. Because Pato has been disappeared. And still the humor continues. The ridiculous bureaucracy, the awful interactions. I just couldn't bear it. Something about the juxtaposition of these two genres--Jewish humor and political atrocity--was too hard for me. So my rating of the book doesn't mean I don't think it's perhaps a valuable book; I just know I can't read it cover to cover.
But I went back to it. I finished in small doses. And the writing IS brilliant. Just so much corruption and longing and torture--all told in these beautifully wrought, darkly humorous sentences. I admire Englander enormously, and I don't want to live in or visit his worlds. As we say, the discipline of the book club kept me going.
August 27, 2007
I didnt think I would like this book as much as I did--it got so much press before it came out that I thought it was too good to be true. But, it ended up being a really compelling story about a jewish family in Argentina during the dirty war. Their son gets "disappeared" and they have no one to turn to b/c of their status in society--b/c of their past even the jewish community wont help them. There is not a ton of dialogue, which really creates the mood that everything is being watched and nothing you say could make any difference anyways. It created that paranoid feeling really well. I'm going to go back and read this guy's short stories now.
May 16, 2017
I'm really smiling, I finished this book HUGELY satisfied and very pleasantly surprised, I have never read anything by this author but I like edgy and brutal and I like Jewish humour and I salute real people trying to make good in the face of bad days. Its life. I picked up the book at a garage sale and the very same evening found myself completely immersed and happily page turning, there really isn't a word out of place, the story is brutal but it pulls you in, the style is exquisite and the dialogue is grade A, seriously brilliant ...
April 2, 2018
One of the better books I've read this year. I came away thinking it was a very strong blend between a Michael Chabon novel and The Trial from Franz Kafka. Captures the feeling of a Jewish family and community living in 1970s Buenos Aires as well as the absurd tragedy of life during the Junta. I will definitely take a look at other things he's done since this one.
December 6, 2017
Onvan : The Ministry of Special Cases - Nevisande : Nathan Englander - ISBN : 375404937 - ISBN13 : 9780375404931 - Dar 339 Safhe - Saal e Chap : 2005
November 18, 2025
4.5. A haunting exploration of Argentina’s Dirty War through the experience of one Jewish family. I read this book for a college class on the postmodern novel ten years ago and have wanted to revisit it ever since. It never seemed a more fitting time than now when our own government seems to be trying to disappear people day after day.
I love historical fiction books that introduce you to parts of history you didn’t know about, and I love when they do it in a way that forces you to do your own research to make sense of it all. Gotta flex those brain muscles once in a while.
I love historical fiction books that introduce you to parts of history you didn’t know about, and I love when they do it in a way that forces you to do your own research to make sense of it all. Gotta flex those brain muscles once in a while.
April 10, 2011
Not an easy read because of the context (torture and disappearances in the aftermath of the Argentinan coupe in the 70's), but I was somewhat prepared as I had read his book of short stories, "For the Relief of Unbearable Urges" (which I highly recommend). After I finished the book I watched a few brief video interviews with the author, Nathan Englander, and one of his comments was that he needs to write a "pressurized novel." His apparent meaning is that, in this case, he spent ten years distilling a huge number of characters and events down to what remains in The Ministry of Special Cases. Honestly, that makes sense to me because I do feel that his book is positively imbued with so many layers of meaning and message that it is a bit exhausting to absorb (and I think that writing it exhausted him).
What did I love about this book? The mood, the rhythm of the words, the sense that I was being taken on a somber, even dangerous, journey. That I was inside this story, a part of it. I never once felt detached. Englander made me feel the characters' fear, pain, joy, confusion, hope, humor, irony, bitterness, love, poignancy, desperation, emptiness, isolation, struggle...
Frankly, I shudder at the thought of being obsessed with this story for ten years.
I'm really glad I read it and I recommend that you do, too. However, I am now in the need of a hug and a few hours in the sunshine counting my blessings...
What did I love about this book? The mood, the rhythm of the words, the sense that I was being taken on a somber, even dangerous, journey. That I was inside this story, a part of it. I never once felt detached. Englander made me feel the characters' fear, pain, joy, confusion, hope, humor, irony, bitterness, love, poignancy, desperation, emptiness, isolation, struggle...
Frankly, I shudder at the thought of being obsessed with this story for ten years.
I'm really glad I read it and I recommend that you do, too. However, I am now in the need of a hug and a few hours in the sunshine counting my blessings...
May 5, 2022
The opening scene is a sinister metaphor for a dark period in Argentina’s history – the fearsome junta of the 70ies. Kaddish, under the cover of darkness is removing Jewish names from headstones in a forgotten cemetery in Buenos Aires. The ‘erasing’ – the ‘disappearing’ continues as a growing evil in a government that breeds corruption.
The author, Nathan Englander demands patience as he often, cleverly creates confusion, only to suddenly adjust the focus, revealing clarity that creates maximum impact on the reader.
His black humour provides relief for the growing despair Kaddish, his family and a nation suffer, attempting to survive a ruthless dictatorship. The author’s wit and love for the absurd flavours his narrative so it reads like a fable, possibly softening the horror hidden deeper in Argentina’s Dirty War. I fell under Englander’s spell, who kept me on edge until the last page.
The author, Nathan Englander demands patience as he often, cleverly creates confusion, only to suddenly adjust the focus, revealing clarity that creates maximum impact on the reader.
His black humour provides relief for the growing despair Kaddish, his family and a nation suffer, attempting to survive a ruthless dictatorship. The author’s wit and love for the absurd flavours his narrative so it reads like a fable, possibly softening the horror hidden deeper in Argentina’s Dirty War. I fell under Englander’s spell, who kept me on edge until the last page.
October 3, 2009
What's wrong with this book? Two things: (1) It seems like it was designed for people to write papers about it, especially people who are about to travel back in time to 1992; there'sall this stuff about fences and boundaries, and erasing names. Not subtle. Also, (2) every sentence is awkward, and in a way that does not seem deliberate. I'd give the book one star, but one thing about it is impressive: not one positive thing happens in the book; every single event is Something Bad. This is quite an achievement formally, and all the more so because it doesn't drag the book down. But the ungainly prose and the flashy "literary" tricks do.
March 24, 2009
Everything about this book is largely good, except that it is agony to read. So much pain.
December 8, 2018
Made me sad and made me feel kinda dumb.
March 12, 2021
Another reviewer said that this book is less than the sum of its parts, and that's about the best description I can come up with for this jumbled novel. I've enjoyed the short stories by this author and I think this is the author's strength--cool ideas, quirky scenes, humor tinged with seriousness. In this novel, select scenes would have been great short stories, but they didn't string together into a satisfying whole.
The book tells the story of a Jewish family in Argentina during the "dirty war" where there's a change in government. During the first half of the book, this read as a light, sort of crazy book with scenes like a debt being repaid through a dubious rhinoplasty. But then, the book takes a dark turn when the family's son is taken by government police and disappears. Circulating through various police stations and government offices (including the titular Ministry of Special Cases), the parents search for their son, search for answers, and question everything. The seriousness and gut-wrenching reality of this never penetrated though because of the continuing unreality of the characters and the slightly jokey tone of the beginning of the book.
The narrator for the audiobook was fine, but not memorable. I think the format of this book probably works better as text than audiobook, but maybe my dissatisfaction is just that I didn't like the book much.
I think I'll wait for this author to write more short stories. I highly recommend his collections--What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank and For the Relief of Unbearable Urges.
The book tells the story of a Jewish family in Argentina during the "dirty war" where there's a change in government. During the first half of the book, this read as a light, sort of crazy book with scenes like a debt being repaid through a dubious rhinoplasty. But then, the book takes a dark turn when the family's son is taken by government police and disappears. Circulating through various police stations and government offices (including the titular Ministry of Special Cases), the parents search for their son, search for answers, and question everything. The seriousness and gut-wrenching reality of this never penetrated though because of the continuing unreality of the characters and the slightly jokey tone of the beginning of the book.
The narrator for the audiobook was fine, but not memorable. I think the format of this book probably works better as text than audiobook, but maybe my dissatisfaction is just that I didn't like the book much.
I think I'll wait for this author to write more short stories. I highly recommend his collections--What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank and For the Relief of Unbearable Urges.
May 18, 2024
The misadventures of Kaddish Poznan start out absurd and macabre as he chisels names from the graves of Jewish gangsters in their segregated cemetery, to protect the reputations of their descendants. As he struggles to earn money from this strange profession, grimly convinced that one day it will make him rich, his wife Lillian works in insurance, and his son Pato goes about his life as a surly teenage student.
But just as the eternally unfortunate Kaddish erases names from the past, Argentina's Dirty War ushers in a regime that is all too willing to erase names from the present, and to wipe out futures. With a certain inevitability, Pato goes missing, an inciting incident that feels as though it comes a little late in a novel that starts out feeling like a collection of blackly comic short stories linked by the Poznan family. And it should be observed that Englander is more noted for his short stories than for his novel writing.
As though setting out to demonstrate the adage that the death of one is a tragedy, while the death of millions merely a statisic, Englander shows the despair of a country through the turmoil into which Kaddish and Lillian are plunged. Between them and their various attempts to learn the truth about Pato's fate, various aspects of Argentina's state are exposed. The brutality of the military, the complicity of the church, the Kafkaesque bureaucracy of the civil service, and the corruption of just about everyone. And all of this is viewed from the perspective of a Jewish family, outcasts in a minority, a family who feel particularly vulnerable to the winds of change due to their lack of support.
You don't exactly enjoy a book like this, but it's undeniably highly-crafted and engaging. It feels like a magical realist novel... without the magic. Something about it doesn't quite gel, and I'm not even sure what, but it's certainly a rewarding read.
But just as the eternally unfortunate Kaddish erases names from the past, Argentina's Dirty War ushers in a regime that is all too willing to erase names from the present, and to wipe out futures. With a certain inevitability, Pato goes missing, an inciting incident that feels as though it comes a little late in a novel that starts out feeling like a collection of blackly comic short stories linked by the Poznan family. And it should be observed that Englander is more noted for his short stories than for his novel writing.
As though setting out to demonstrate the adage that the death of one is a tragedy, while the death of millions merely a statisic, Englander shows the despair of a country through the turmoil into which Kaddish and Lillian are plunged. Between them and their various attempts to learn the truth about Pato's fate, various aspects of Argentina's state are exposed. The brutality of the military, the complicity of the church, the Kafkaesque bureaucracy of the civil service, and the corruption of just about everyone. And all of this is viewed from the perspective of a Jewish family, outcasts in a minority, a family who feel particularly vulnerable to the winds of change due to their lack of support.
You don't exactly enjoy a book like this, but it's undeniably highly-crafted and engaging. It feels like a magical realist novel... without the magic. Something about it doesn't quite gel, and I'm not even sure what, but it's certainly a rewarding read.
July 23, 2020
A stunning masterpiece. I made the very smart decision to take this novel with me when I went to Buenos Aires over ten years ago. Englander's use of Buenos Aires reads like that from a native; that his wife is apparently from Argentina is confirmed by the control he has over setting. I loved the novel the first time I read it, and I have used it twice for the college course I developed called "A City Becomes a World." In addition to having students read this novel, they also have to watch a documentary or two on Argentina's Dirty War. This only amplifies how strong the heart of this novel beats. The relationship between Kaddish (father) and Pato (son) is rendered with such painful authenticity: "He cursed his son with all the love he had." Few novels so successfully balance the drama when a wife's love for her husband is usurped by the love for her child(ren). Rushdie does a great job of this—of everything, really—in "The Satanic Verses." Here, Englander follows fathers and sons in the front story, and the role of matriarchs in the background: "Lillian had seen these hands before. They were her mother's. That's where she knew them. It is not like reading a palm, Lillian thought. There's no future in it," this train of thought assigned to Lillian gives Englander the occasion to deliver one of the greatest—and simplest—sentences in recent memory: "The back of a hand is all past."
If Carolyn Forché's landmark poem "The Colonel" is the ultimate kick to the gut re facist dictators, there are moments in this harrowing novel that take it a step further resulting in blows aren't just knockout blows, but blows that have landed with such clarity and such force that they prove fatal.
Few books can stand up to multiple intensely-scrutinized re-readings and still somehow get better and better with time.
If Carolyn Forché's landmark poem "The Colonel" is the ultimate kick to the gut re facist dictators, there are moments in this harrowing novel that take it a step further resulting in blows aren't just knockout blows, but blows that have landed with such clarity and such force that they prove fatal.
Few books can stand up to multiple intensely-scrutinized re-readings and still somehow get better and better with time.
May 14, 2022
A thoroughly enjoyable satirical book dealing with a serious subject.
August 29, 2023
Takes a leaf out of Kafka’s book. Despite the occasionally difficult (even clumsy) writing style, still a brilliant and chilling work.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 481 reviews