Efraim

by Alfred Andersch

Efraim's Book is the sophisticated, offbeat novel about the peculiar society of post-World-II Berlin. Its hero George Efraim is a Jewish reporter who has fought for the British on the Italian front and lost both parents to Auschwitz. He returns home to Berlin in 1962 for the first time since the war to investigate the wartime disappearance of his editor's daughter, only to begin writing a novel, which helps him "to embark on a certain arrangement of signs with the help of which I hope to chart my position." Like the great German novels of Günter Grass and Heinrich Böll, Alfred Andersch's Efraim's Book grapples with the legacy of World War II and the Holocaust in all its horror and sad humanity. A troubling yet often humorous book, it offers a poignant account of the traumatized German state.

“We find this hall-of-mirrors construction in Uwe Johnson, Peter Handke and others. But Andersch manipulates it with an ease and unpretentiousness that are seductively disorienting, until the reader himself is dissolved into that bittersweet sigh, in equal measure humorous and despairing, that is Efraim's Book.”

— John Simon, New York Times Book Review on Alfred Andersch's Efraim’s Book

Genres: German Literature, Fiction, Classics, Germany

350 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1967

About the author

German writer, publisher, and radio editor.

Reviews

[Marvin · Rating 1 out of 5]

Edit: done with the book, noth even worth the ink used to pront those pages. I think good reviews just go with the masses as the author was well known but I have read news articles with more quality. A true test of endurance and I pushed through only to have a reference of a horrible book to know what is well written.


Almost halfway through the book does not impress. Sentences like: „good lord how could I get so carried away“ let me think that the author did not indend to release those notes, rather was rambling on and then released everything nonetheless. There are better bookd around that topic, area for sure.

[trombosenjose · Rating 4 out of 5]

sehr interessante gedanken zum thema zufall und schicksal, außerdem hab ich noch nie ein buch gelesen das vom aufbau so wild konzipiert ist aber es funktioniert und gibt der geschichte eine hohe glaubwürdigkeit

[Jesse · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably the most formally accomplished novel I have ever read. Andersch uses meta techniques brilliantly to transform potentially weak moments into major coups. Beautiful.

[K. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can't say I enjoyed reading Efraim. I can't say I would recommend it to anyone else with the expectation that they enjoy it. This book is a slog. Half of it is a stream of consciousness with paragraphs that drag on for four straight pages without a break. It would have taken me six months to power through even if it wasn't written in German. But...I'm glad I finished it. I'm glad I read it. I think anyone who can speak German *should* read it in its original language (I don't think it's worth reading a translation though. It seems like it only works in German). I wish I had read it in college like I was supposed to, but either way, I am a better person for having read this book. The overarching theme of belonging--or a lack thereof--hits like a brick in the context of a German Jewish man returning to Berlin 25 years after the Second World War. After a crime of that scale, nowhere in the world could ever feel like "home," so how does an ordinary person carry on? How does he find a place for himself when none exists? Efraim doesn't really have a clear answer to that, except to say that, well, he does. He has to. And if he can't find one, he'll just have to make one himself.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another reviewer described himself as "slogging" through this book, and that's how I felt. A subject of great interest to me - the aftermath of WWII in Berlin (and London & Rome) - A Jewish journalist returns to his family's home, knowing his parents died in a camp, a "lost" daughter of his boss, a girlfriend, a wife - it dragged but had enough interest that I did finish it. But somewhat reluctantly.

[LiA · Rating 5 out of 5]

Georg Ephraim, deutscher Jude, Emigrant in England, Journalist, kehrt zum ersten Mal nach seiner Flucht 1938 nach Berlin zurück (1962). Vordergründig, um das Schicksal der (illegitimen) jüdischen Tochter des Chefredakteurs seiner "conservative paper", John Keir, aufzuklären bzw. herauszufinden, wo Esther geblieben ist und ob sie noch lebt. Aber auch, um einen kurzen Moment lang mit einem Land wieder Kontakt aufzunehmen, das einst seine Heimat war, und es heute nicht mehr sein kann. Ephraim geht letztlich nach Rom und wird Schriftsteller. Oder schreibt seine Geschichte. Ein faszinierender Spiegel der Zeit. Dauerhaft aktuell, und heute, 46 Jahre nach seiner Entstehung (1967) zugleich als Geschichtsbuch zu lesen.