Product Description

Written in Hebrew and published in Palestine in 1929, this is the only novel by Vogel, a poet who is presumed to have died at Auschwitz in 1944. Set in Vienna in the 1920s, the novel is a portrait of the disastrous marriage of one Rudolph Gurdweill, a poor Jewish intellectual, to a sadistic and anti-Semitic baroness. Her unfaithfulness and cruelty to the well-meaning but helpless and masochistic writer clearly represents the relationship between Vienna and its Jews. The complex atmosphere of Viennese culture between the wars is conveyed in highly detailed descriptions; countless cigarettes and cups of coffee and endless rendezvous in cafes seem to be central to the existence of these doomed characters. An important novel, not only as a historic document, but as a work of literature that echoes both Kafka and Mann.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #329178 in Books
• Published on: 2007-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 501 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Written in Hebrew and published in Palestine in 1929, this is the single novel by this author, a poet who is presumed to have died at Auschwitz in 1944. Set in Vienna in the 1920s, the novel is a portrait of the disastrous marriage of one Rudolph Gurdweill, a poor Jewish intellectual, to a sadistic and anti-Semitic baroness. Her unfaithfulness and cruelty to the well-meaning but helpless and masochistic writer clearly represent the relationship between Vienna and its Jews. The complex atmosphere of Viennese culture between the wars is conveyed marvelously in highly detailed descriptions of the daily lives of these characters. Countless cigarettes and cups of coffee, and endless rendezvous in cafes, seem to be central to their existence as these doomed characters play out their extraordinarily neurotic roles. Vogel's eye for the telling ironic nuance misses nothing. When Gurdwell notices two policemen standing in a boat in the middle of the canal, stirring the water with a long pole, he thinks to himself, "They're looking for someone who's going to drown himself tomorrow or next month . . . although it hasn't even entered that person's head yet to put an end to his life." This is an important novel, not only as the historic document that it is, but as a work of literature that echoes both Kafka and Mann.
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Language Notes
Text: English, Hebrew (translation)

Customer Reviews

Hebrew Fiction Abroad
David Vogel was a Hebrew poet and novelist who died at the hands of the Nazis in 1944. Married Life, his only long work in English translation, chronicles the world which Vogel inhabited, seedy Vienna between the World Wars, a place where marginalization was the norm. Married Life stands on its own legs, but it is all the more amazing when the reader realizes that this novel was written in Hebrew in Europe, by a man who did not speak Hebrew as his daily language or live in Palestine, which had a population of native Hebrew speakers, in some numbers, since the end of the 19th century. Vogel inserted his Hebrew into situations where it did not belong, plunging it into the kind of normality it would not receive until the full-flowering of Hebrew in British Mandate Palestine and later the State of Israel. So for this reason, but by no means the only or most important, Vogel's work is significant. He was one of the last secular writers of Hebrew to write outside the land of Israel. His poems, novels and novellas stand as interesting testaments to a language and people in transition to their own state and culture.

An outstanding novel
This is a novel that brings the story of a twisted relation between a man and a woman in the atmosphere of the 19 century in Europe. It is a very piercing novel and it stayed with me although I have read it a long time ago. It is about an obsession of a weak man for a cruel dominating woman.

It is written in a very special style and I think it is a masterpiece.