msjg's review
5.0
Have you been waiting all your life to read a novel in which Sigmund Freud, the inventor of Esperanto, a Hasidic rebbe, a love-starved dybbuk and the Archangel Metatron are all significant characters? Your day has come. Such a delicious book, for those of you who like that sort of thing. I do.
smaravetz's review
2.0
The first part of this book was really interesting, a quick read, but the 2nd & 3rd parts just dragged. Sort of a personal epic, it followed the main character through the early days of psychoanalysis, the Esperanto movement and the Warsaw ghetto. In some ways, reminded me of Doctorow & his way of cramming as many significant people from an era into a novel as possible, but also dealt with the supernatural and religious.
directorpurry's review
CW: Rape, suicide, death of a child
Read for the "Read the World" challenge for: Austria
Read for the "Read the World" challenge for: Austria
mikolee's review
3.0
Wow what a fascinating book. Complicated long winded novel with great historical figures from Freud to Dr Esperanto. Reincarnated love seems almost like a trite topic but it was told through such an interesting lense - a sort of agnostic Jewish eye doctor right before the rise of Hitler. A look into the Jewish intellectual life.
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