For Two Thousand Years - Mihail Sebastian

-

 


For two thousand years was written and published in 1934, which itself holds a significance because it is an account of a Jewish person in Romania before the second world war. The narrative starts in 1923 when the narrator is in university. We see depictions of bullying and violence against him and his fellow Jews colleagues. He begins to write a diary to cope up with these issues.
The first couple of sections can be rightly referred to as an agonizing account of a young kid who is insecure and feeling alone. He prefers solitude and immerses himself in literature and abstractions without actually facing the world. He meets a mentor who revolutionizes the way he thinks and makes him feel more connected with the surroundings.

The book spans over 10/12 years into the narrators life where he works as an architect. The unrest in the 1920s become a thing of the past only to be risen again 10 years later. He finds out that his co-workers who were once his friends, people with whom he shared his day to be anti-Semitics. His opinion on this whole issue is complicated because he tries to see both sides of the coin. He sees that 'The Jewish Problem' as they call it is not one that emerges out of the blue but is always there, subdued sometimes but the threat is always present and has been for the last 2000 years (Hence the title of the novel). He also states several times in the novel that there is no wrong person, there is no one to blame.

The character building of this novel is one of a kind. We have these in depth analysis of the main characters psyche and their opinions. It took a while to get into the rhythm of the writer because at the start of each section he jumps in with a new character and as the chapter progresses we put the whole picture in place in retrospect.

For someone with very little knowledge on the history of Romania and the Jewish conflict this was an eye opener and even though exclusively based on the Jewish people I felt that this was representative of the minorities here in Sri Lanka too.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead (Section-wise Summary)

-
Image
                                                                  SECTION 1   The book unfolds on a black kid who is living with his grandmother, hanging out where she worked and doing odd jobs while immensely interested in reading comics, books or whatever he could find. A fanatic of the speeches of Martin Luther King he would listen to them repeatedly and dream of a time when he would be treated equally. He encounters several acts of injustice of which he cannot wrap his head around even at a younger age. Little does he know that injustice is to be a crucial part of his life in a few years.   We are given a sense of plot and mystery. Elwood seems to get arrested and we now don't know why? He is portrayed as a person with sound morals and a slightly different kid than the other kids in the area.   ...
Read more

Of Mice And Men by John Steinbeck (Book Review and Summary)

-
Image
Of Mice and Men is a book published in 1937 by the American Author John Steinbeck. One of the shortest novels I've read, 'Of Mice and Men' is a creation which has been able to integrate a lot of the social culture of the post-Civil War America with its take on the freed African Americans from slavery. This is not the center piece of the story though.   'Of Mice and Men' and portrays concisely the relationship of two individuals George and Lennie who are opposites in their temperance but however are thrown together in the hopes of achieving the so called 'American Dream'. George, the smarter of the two basks in adoration of Lennie who is portrayed as someone who isn't bright and is good at following orders but not making actual decisions. Therefore, it is George who actually does the thinking for the both of them. We first see them on their way to a new job. With the conversations between the two we learn that they had to run away from their pre...
Read more