John De-Falbe

A late run on the rails

issue 19 March 2005

All of a sudden, there is a buzz about Cynthia Ozick. Although respected for many years as a writer of fiction and criticism, no one ever seemed to expect her to reach a wide audience. Now, together with more famous luminaries, she has been announced as a contender for the first Man Booker International Prize: the media circus has opened itself to her. Her last novel, The Puttermesser Papers, was never published in the UK at all, despite critical acclaim in the USA, but The Bear Boy (called Heir to the Glimmering World in the US) has been published with a conviction that looks as if it expects substantial sales.

The Mitwisser family are German Jews who have been rescued by the Quakers and brought to the Bronx in the 1930s. The Professor goes off to the library each day ‘attired like an ambassador’ to pursue his research on a forgotten sect of 10th-century schismatics called the Karaites.

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