Bøger af Nachoem M. Wijnberg

The Jews is an anti-historical thriller in the form of a Talmudic tragicomedy, taking place sometime during the Second World War. Stalin and his Minister of Security Beria are worried about the political developments in Germany, where Martin Heidegger has replaced Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of the Third Reich. Suspecting that the Frankfurt School, headed by Vice-Chancellor Walter Benjamin, has masterminded this takeover, he dispatches two Jewish actors, Salomon Maimon and Natalia Goncharova, to investigate the situation in the hope of uncovering the extent of the Jewish conspiracy.Upon arrival in Berlin, Maimon and Goncharova are received by Benjamin, who introduces them to Heidegger. The latter has stopped speaking to anyone except his mother since his rise to power, and Benjamin holds long speeches on the history of theater, the law, God, the royal gods and the old goddesses. Eventually, prodded by his mother, Heidegger marries Goncharova, surrounded by a merry audience.The novel ends on a plain somewhere between Moscow and Berlin, where the final battle for Jerusalem is being waged. In front of the entrance of a camp, Maimon and Benjamin are joined by a group of old Jews arriving by train, bringing the news of Stalin's death by circumcision. They reenact scenes from the Old Testament while Jerusalem is burning. Did the world to come finally arrive?

"The Dutch poet Nachoem Wijnberg is one of the most inventive, surprising, entertaining, and thought-provoking poets writing today. He is also remarkably productive, so that up to now only a small portion of his extensive body of work has appeared in English translation and none of it in America. This new selection of poems draws on all nineteen volumes Wijnberg has published to date and also includes uncollected work, constituting an indispensable introduction to this wry, off-kilter, spellbinding modern master. Wijnberg, not only a poet but a professor of business studies-hence his persistent concern with questions of value, real and false-writes only in the plainest language while displaying a formidable erudition. His poems engage economics, philosophy, and history; he writes Chinese poems and Jewish poems and classic songs; he tells stories that may or may not be parables; he writes from where the mind meets the heart. "Tell all the truth but tell it slant," Emily Dickinson enjoins. Wijnberg for his part has said, "Alienation is the last thing I am trying to achieve. The world is strange enough as it is and my poems help in dealing with that strangeness by bringing it close and as far as possible trying to understand it.""--