Verklempt

Identity in crisis. This is best-selling author Peter Sichrovsky's territory. What makes the Vienna-born Sichrovsky turn to Jewish love stories after his landmark books of interviews with German and Austrian children of Holocaust survivors, Strangers in Their Own Land (1986, Basic Books) and children of Nazis, Born Guilty (1988, Basic Books) are common threads of feeling lost, misdirected, repressed, estranged, haunted, or shamed. These are love stories where love is a bitter pill, a joke, a missed chance at happiness, a secret, a ghost, or a longing to be with a person one cannot even remember. Sichrovsky writes without embellishment, spare outlines of characters that feel familiar, and infuses them with dark humor and tragedy in equal force. With characteristic inquisitiveness and provocation, Sichrovsky shows he can deliver a delightful and absurd collection that entertains and inspires us to tears, laughter, revelations.