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The Five is a captivating novel of the decadent fin-de-siècle written by Vladimir Jabotinsky (1880–1940), a controversial leader in the Zionist movement whose literary talents, until now, have largely gone unrecognized by Western readers. The author deftly paints a picture of Russia's decay and decline-a world permeated with sexuality, mystery, and intrigue. Michael R. Katz has crafted the first English-language translation of this important novel, which was written in Russian in 1935 and published a year later in Paris under the title Pyatero.
The book is Jabotinsky's elegaic paean to the Odessa of his youth, a place that no longer exists. It tells the story of an upper-middle-class Jewish family, the Milgroms, at the turn of the century. It follows five siblings as they change, mature, and come to accept their places in a rapidly evolving world. With flashes of humor, Jabotinsky captures the ferment of the time as reflected in political, social, artistic, and spiritual developments. He depicts with nostalgia the excitement of life in old Odessa and comments poignantly on the failure of the dream of Jewish assimilation within the Russian empire.
The book is Jabotinsky's elegaic paean to the Odessa of his youth, a place that no longer exists. It tells the story of an upper-middle-class Jewish family, the Milgroms, at the turn of the century. It follows five siblings as they change, mature, and come to accept their places in a rapidly evolving world. With flashes of humor, Jabotinsky captures the ferment of the time as reflected in political, social, artistic, and spiritual developments. He depicts with nostalgia the excitement of life in old Odessa and comments poignantly on the failure of the dream of Jewish assimilation within the Russian empire.
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Reviews
"In his sympathetic depiction of the flawed Milgroms, Jabotinsky at once created a paean to the beloved city of his youth while providing Russian literature with the very type of sympathetic Jewish novel whose absence he bemoaned, and which he predicted was not likely to appear even when Soviet Russian literature matured."
Louis Gordon,Jerusalem Report
"For Jabotinsky, Arab national aspirations, like those of the Zionists, were legitimate. Hence his acknowledgment of the inevitable violence of the struggle.... In Jabotinsky's future, Arab and Jew would not be neighbors so much as carefully differentiated groupings within the body politic of the new state.... In Jabotinsky's writing, Zionism both affirms and doubts itself. What would Israel look
Jacqueline Rose,The Nation
"The most remarkable thing about The Five is not that it was written by a man who, the year before its publication, was occupied day and night in leading his Revisionist Party out of the World Zionist Organization and founding a rump Zionist body after a negotiated truce between him and Ben-Gurion was voted down.... The Five would be just as tender yet unsentimental a novel, and as technically acc
Hillel Halkin,The New Republic