Himmelfarb

A young anthropology student during the Third Reich, Richard sets off to South America to observe the indigenous peoples and cultures. Ignoring the guidelines of his professor, Richard hires a Jew, Leo Himmelfarb, to accompany and assist him during his two year journey. While Richard expresses only alarm and disdain for the natives he encounters, Leo immerses himself in Brazilian culture, demonstrating a genuine enthusiasm and curiosity for his discoveries. When Leo falls seriously ill, he dictates a brilliant manuscript to Richard, who, leaving Leo for dead, promises to have it published. Publish it he does, but under his own name, and to great critical acclaim. On his eightieth birthday, Richard receives a letter containing these searing words: "You are a language thief - since I know that in your long life you were capable one day of seizing my sentences and publishing them as your own. Dwelling in you is awful, dear Richard.... I don't want to be your faithful companion any longer, your book dedication Jew.... I await your suggestions." It is signed by Leo Himmelfarb. Like a reified nightmare, these words confirm to Richard that his distinguished professional career, indeed his entire life, has been a lie. His response determines the conclusion of this thrilling and witty novel in which Michael Kruger, playing the past off the present, explores the tenuous boundaries of a relationship between two vastly different, and yet inextricably bound, lives.

Publishers Weekly

The latest from elegant German stylist Kruger ( The End of the Novel ) is a bleakly comic memoir of a purloined life. Richard, the sour, diffident narrator, has built an acclaimed career as a travel writer and ethnologist on another man's work--a journal kept by Leo Himmelfarb, the German Jew who accompanied him on a wartime journey among the Indians of the Brazilian rainforest. Himmelfarb's observations reflected all the intellectual curiosity and ambition the Nazi-approved Richard lacked; Richard abandoned him, at death ' s door, in the jungle. Fifty years later, Richard celebrates his 80th birthday, a hollow man, his only companions a morose wolfhound and a pair of conniving domestics. Surrounded by unread books and unwanted testimonials, he is oppressed by the corrosive conviction of his own inauthenticity. But his sullen, solitary senescence is dramatically shaken by the arrival of a letter bearing the unmistakable hand of Himmelfarb himself--still alive, finally aware of the injustice done him and demanding recompense. In conception, Kruger's mendacious bookworm has clear echoes of Beckett and Bellow, but the wry philosophical tone that colors his reflections on his odd life lived in history's margins is quite distinctive. A tale rooted in the reveries of so stunted and unlikable a personality won't be to all tastes; but those who prefer the whimper to the bang will find much to admire in Kruger's deft shadings. (Sept.)