Mestizo: A Novel

by Ricardo Feierstein

First published in Argentina in 1994, this ingenious novel is a detective story in which the police try to solve an assassination and a lost man tries to reconstruct his identity. These two searches are set against the story of four generations of a Jewish family, a social and cultural narrative that spans nearly a hundred years of cataclysmic events of the century including World War I, the Russian and Cuban revolutions, the birth of the state of Israel, and the military dictatorship in Argentina. Identity�personal, cultural, historical�is the main theme of this novel, as is the experience of being �other.� Rejection is represented in many forms, including that of being a Jew surrounded by anti-Semitic gentiles and that of being a progressive Jew among the Orthodox. As the characters find ways to eliminate discrimination, it becomes clear there is no unblended race or religion, and that to be a mestizo, a person of mixed culture and blood, is to reject the concept of purity and homogeneity.

351 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2000

Reviews

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oy vey, this was a hard book to read and a hard book about which to write. Published in 1994, it tells the story of 4 generations of a Jewish family - constantly going back and forth between life in small town Poland (though boundaries frequently changed) and emigration to Argentina, with a frequent change of characters and story lines. For me, often hard to follow and sometimes boring. No character is consistent enough to develop an attachment or even an interest. No one in this work of fiction has happiness, contentment or even satisfactory relationships. Life is hard, in Poland, in Israel, in Argentina.

[Ssadow · Rating 5 out of 5]

The most important novel to come from Latin American-Jewish writing.