{"product_id":"the-jewish-son-isbn-9781644212899","title":"The Jewish Son","description":"\u003cb\u003eA breathtaking short novel about the complicated feelings of hate and pity in familial love by an acknowledged Latin American master.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA brilliant and dark tour de force, \u003ci\u003eJewish Son \u003c\/i\u003epresents the delicate archeology of the stubbornness of a boy who demands his parents’ attention. It is a brutal confession of the lies necessary to win a space of approval in a troubled family, a treatise on the excesses of love and the paradoxical lack of affection that is never enough, an accomplished narration of childhood from the point of view of the adult gaze, and a rewriting of Kafka’s \u003ci\u003eLetter to His Father\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs his father’s imminent death becomes an ever more concrete reality with surgeries, caregivers, sedatives and his mother grows obsessed with visits to the rabbi and amasses saint cards and Buddhist prayers, the narrator evokes the remnants of the rejection that pervaded his childhood.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWithout yielding to the idealization of youth or to the delight in pain before physical decay and death, Guebel dissects, beautifully although with discomfort, his very early conversion to the dream of literature as an act of reparation.\"Guebel's ... writing is always alert and impressive and is strikingly well translated by Jessica Sequeira\"\u003cb\u003e —\u003ci\u003eThe Irish Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"[A]n electrifying novella\"—\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eJewish Currents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"In Argentine writer Guebel’s potent blend of autobiographical fiction and criticism (after \u003ci\u003eThe Absolute\u003c\/i\u003e), he analyzes his relationship with his 89-year-old father and reflects on Franz Kafka’s \u003ci\u003eLetter to His Father\u003c\/i\u003e. Daniel regularly shuttles Luis, who has terminal prostate cancer, from Luis’s home to the hospital. During their time together, Daniel quizzes Luis to help spark his memory (“When I ask him his what his name is, he says: ‘Me’ ”) and entertains Luis with games of dominoes. In flashbacks, Daniel recounts a childhood rife with antisemitic schoolyard bullies, beatings from Luis, and attempts to win over Luis’s affection. As Daniel grows older, his father’s physical abuse turns verbal, and while working at the family’s refrigerator store, Daniel is tasked with an endless barrage of menial and demeaning duties. Throughout, Daniel meditates on Kafka’s account of his own complicated relationship with his father (“What the text constantly says is: that which I am, Father, you shall never understand”), and finds contrasts between himself and Kafka, as he matures into the role of caretaker. Along the way, he arrives at striking insights on the fragility of masculinity. A satisfying story emerges from Guebel’s searching study.\" \u003ci\u003e(Apr.) \u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Who does Daniel Guebel resemble as a writer? One might say that his subversive prose comes from Gogol and Nabokov, or even that he seems an improbable Argentine Pynchon. But Guebel is great due to his own qualities.” —\u003cb\u003eCarlos Pardo, \u003ci\u003eEl País\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “A book like this one, which asks about identity, the invention of an inheritance, and even the construction of the figure of the author, necessarily had to inquire into the very limits of the genre in which it is written.” —\u003cb\u003eMauro Libertella, \u003ci\u003eClarín\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “This brief novel, written in just two months, has the simplicity—which never means simplemindedness—of a perfect book. The Jewish Son is an autobiographical novella that reads like a memoir, in which Guebel retraces his relationship to his father: from the boy’s childhood education of physical punishments, to the Copernican turn when the grown man has to take responsibility for a vulnerable parent.”  —\u003cb\u003ePatricio Zunini, \u003ci\u003eInfobae\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Guebel measures himself against Kafka as a long-suffering Jewish son, but also as an author. He acknowledges the Prague-born writer’s top place on the podium of European literature (as he assures us, he wouldn’t hesitate to save him in a fire before Joyce), and like Franz, he shields himself with writing as a refuge from paternal incomprehension and cruelty.” —\u003cb\u003eVioleta Gorodischer, \u003ci\u003eLa Nación\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003eOne of Argentina’s and Latin America’s finest writers, \u003cb\u003eDANIEL GUEBEL\u003c\/b\u003e is the author of some 17 prior novels, four collections of short stories, and four plays. His novel \u003ci\u003eThe Absolute \u003c\/i\u003e(Seven Stories, 2022) was named the best work of fiction of 2016 by \u003ci\u003eLa Nación\u003c\/i\u003e and received the 2017 Literary Prize from the Argentine Academy of Literature. \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eJESSICA SEQUERIA \u003c\/b\u003ehas translated works by Adolfo Couve, Teresa Wilms Montt, Sara Gallardo, Liliana Colanzi, Hilda Mundy, Jean de la Hire, and Maurice Level, among many others.\u003cbr\u003e ","brand":"Seven Stories Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46302963761381,"sku":"NP9781644212899","price":13.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781644212899.jpg?v=1767740004","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/the-jewish-son-isbn-9781644212899","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}