"The Book; yes, their Book. They had no state, holding them together, no country, no soil, no king, no form of life in common. If, in spite of this, they were one, more one than all the other peoples of the world, it was the Book that sweated them into unity. Brown, white, black, yellow Jews, large and small, splendid and in rags, godless and pious, they might crouch and dream all their lives in a quiet room, or fare splendidly in a radiant, golden whirlwind over the earth, but sunk deep in all of them was the lesson of the Book. Manifold is the world, but it is vain and fleeting as wind; but one and only is the God of Israel, the everlasting, the infinite, the Jehovah." -Jud Süss, 1925. When Feuchtwanger’s two best known novels “Jew Süss” (“Power”) and “Ugly Duchess” were first translated into English in the 1920s, they caused a tremendous sensation in England and then in America. The critics all hailed Feuchtwanger as the master of the historical novel—the peer of Dumas and Scott but written with the psychology of our own day. “Jew Süss,” set in the 18th century Germany (at the time consisting of numerous fragmented independent states), deals with an identity crisis: in order to gain social power, the novel's protagonist attempts to forsake his Jewish heritage and becomes assimilated into the mainstream of German culture. More than that, Süss finds himself being in the position of potential kingmaker. Brilliant, attractive and with an insatiable lust for power, he practically ruled the Duke and his court, pandering to the vices of dissolute nobility, mounting through his intrigues to dizzying heights of power. Süss’s only vulnerable spot, however, is his precious, exquisite, gentle daughter, Naomi. When her beauty became exposed to the beastliness of the Duke, tragedy came swiftly after.

Jew Suss

Literature & Fiction

Feuchtwanger, Lion

Genre Fiction

Grafton Bks.

"There are seventy-seven who have the ear of the world, and I am one of them." This was no idle boast on the part of Flavius Josephus, and, in the days the Roman Empire's greatness, it was no small achievement. It had not, however, been an easy task for the Jewish historian to make his way as a Roman and a Jew, and in the years to come it was to be yet more difficult. Christianity was emerging for the first time as a world idea. The conflict between the forces of nationalism and world citizenship was of growing importance then as today. Josephus' heartbreaking role in this struggle has a poignant modernity. With all the ambiguity of his character, his work, his destiny, a participant fighting and suffering in the great events of the period, he is more than a man of importance---he becomes a symbol of his age.  Lion Feuchtwanger's second volume of the "Josephus" trilogy takes up the story of Josephus at the time when he had become a power in Rome, and Rome was determined to be the only power in the world. Through the novelist's eyes the reader relives the dramatic events of Titus's reign---the Fire, the Plague, the visit from Judea of the exotic and exquisite princess Berenice. He travels with Joseph to Judea, sits in the councils of the Jewish fathers in the days of their great sorrow, searches for information about a certain prophet said to have been crucified at Jerusalem. Thus he is sharing in the strange spectacle of a new faith coming to birth.  Feuchtwanger paints his hero against the background of great historical events, against the background of an era that more than almost any other was adventurous and colorful and profoundly stirred by the eternally crucial questions of the destiny of human civilization. "The Jew of Rome" is a magnificent panorama of a brilliant age, and a moving portrait of a man whose essential honesty and clear reason made of him a wanderer through the world and a singular historian in the annals of humanity.

The Jew of Rome: Vol. 2 of the Trilogy of Historical Novels on Josephus, Rome, and Judea

History

World

MaKoM Publications

Feuchtwanger has been called, largely because of his story of Flavius Josephus, one of the greatest historical novelists of all time. The book begins with Josephus, aged 50, living in retirement in Rome and ends with his death in Galilee during the bloody uprising of the Jews against their Roman conquerors.  In the present volume, "The Emperor and His Jew," the earlier young and ambitious emissary of Judea to the court of Nero (in "The Judean War") and the militant writer who held the ear of Titus (in "The Jew of Rome") has reached the fullness of years and wisdom. Now he engages in the subtlest and in many ways the most dangerous period of his career. In the East the Jewish fanatics were challenging the might of Rome; and everywhere, even in the family of the Emperor, the Christians were exerting a passive but disturbing force. The time had come for all men to take their stand, and Josephus, who had thought to live and die both a Roman and a defender of the Jewish perspective and cause, was forced to make a choice. This situation intensifies the deep personal conflict in the mind of Josephus, and in this book Feuchtwanger attempts to analyze Josephus' mind and to find motives for his apparently paradoxical actions and views.   In its detail, the "Josephus" trilogy's final work leads the reader through the utterly fascinating daily life of Roman society. At the court of Domitian, in the apartments of the beautiful Empress, Lucia, in the Senate, and in the homes of the financial and intellectual leaders of Rome, Feuchtwanger walks with the ease and confidence of a man born to the toga.  It was Josephus's fate to be feared and hated by three of the most powerful men in the world and to survive them all. His life was beset by the ambiguity of his intellect; his death was glorified by the clear simplicity of his faith.

The Emperor and His Jew: Vol. 3 of the Trilogy of Historical Novels on Josephus, Imperial Rome, and Judea

"The King became passionately enamored with a Jewess who was called by the name of Fermosa, meaning The Beautiful, and he forgot his wife. And he shut himself up with the Jewess for almost seven full years, forgetful of himself, and of his realm also, and paying no heed to any other thing." - Alfonso el Sabio, “Crónica General,” c. 1270. This is a haunting love story of Alfonso VIII, the Christian King of Castile, and Raquel, the beautiful Jewess of Toledo, two lovers trapped by the bitterness and conflict of their times in a tragic alliance. Raquel was the daughter of Yehuda, a wealthy, proud aristocrat, who had come from Seville with his family to serve as Alfonso’s Minister of Finance. His mission was to replenish the country’s depleted treasury, but he saw in this assignment an opportunity to prevent war between the Christian North and the Moslem South and in the process to save his own people, the Jews, from being crushed between these two ruthless forces. But when the impetuous Alfonso fell in love with Raquel and demanded her as his mistress, Yehuda had to choose between his daughter’s future and the fate of his people. In this epic romance of the lovers and their bitter destinies, Lion Feuchtwanger, one of the world’s great historical novelists, has brilliantly recreated the drama and pageantry of the Middle Ages, rent with love and hate, cruelty and compassion, profanity and piety, bloodshed and ritual.

Raquel, the Jewess of Toledo: A Spanish Ballad

Product Description "The Book; yes, their Book. They had no state, holding them together, no country, no soil, no king, no form of life in common. If, in spite of this, they were one, more one than all the other peoples of the world, it was the Book that sweated them into unity. Brown, white, black, yellow Jews, large and small, splendid and in rags, godless and pious, they might crouch and dream all their lives in a quiet room, or fare splendidly in a radiant, golden whirlwind over the earth, but sunk deep in all of them was the lesson of the Book. Manifold is the world, but it is vain and fleeting as wind; but one and only is the God of Israel, the everlasting, the infinite, the Jehovah."-Jud Süss, 1925. When Feuchtwanger’s two best known novels “Jew Süss” (“Power”) and “Ugly Duchess” were first translated into English in the 1920s, they caused a tremendous sensation in England and then in America. The critics all hailed Feuchtwanger as the master of the historical novel—the peer of Dumas and Scott but written with the psychology of our own day. “Jew Süss,” set in the 18th century Germany (at the time consisting of numerous fragmented independent states), deals with an identity crisis: in order to gain social power, the novel's protagonist attempts to forsake his Jewish heritage and becomes assimilated into the mainstream of German culture. More than that, Süss finds himself being in the position of potential kingmaker. Brilliant, attractive and with an insatiable lust for power, he practically ruled the Duke and his court, pandering to the vices of dissolute nobility, mounting through his intrigues to dizzying heights of power. Süss’s only vulnerable spot, however, is his precious, exquisite, gentle daughter, Naomi. When her beauty became exposed to the beastliness of the Duke, tragedy came swiftly after. About the Author The celebrated German-Jewish writer Lion Feuchtwanger (1884-1958) was an incomparable master of the historical novel, applying his distinctive technique of projecting critical contemporary themes onto exceptional individuals and complex historical scenery from times long gone. Using a thorough knowledge of historical detail and playing the role of an enlightened philosopher with a highly idiosyncratic literary style, he engaged both ancient Jewish history and the dilemmas of Jewish existence in his key writings. Throughout his career, Feuchtwanger was drawn to a central theme of Jewishness, and his best work presents the enigma of the Jew and treats the quandary of being Jewish in a non-Jewish world. He depicts the predicament of the "modern" Jew, of whatever historical period, in achieving a synthesis of his or her particular relationship to the Jewish people and a universal relationship to all humanity. Beginning in 1925 with his instantly famous novel "Jew Süss" and followed by his "Josephus" trilogy-"Josephus" ("The Judean War"), 1932; "The Jew of Rome," 1935; and "Josephus and the Emperor" ("The Emperor and His Jew"), 1942-Feuchtwanger deals with the theme of nationalism versus cosmopolitanism, in the trilogy specifically via the life of Josephus Flavius, the renowned yet controversial Jewish historian of the first century. In these inimitable and haunting works, as also in his life, Josephus witnesses firsthand the tragic fall of Judea and the Jerusalem Temple, and then spends his life defending the Jewish cause on the world's greatest stage at the time, Rome. Feuchtwanger also wrote fascinating historical novels on Goya the artist, Benjamin Franklin in France ("Arms for America"), and Rousseau the philosopher. Toward his life's end in California, Feuchtwanger took up the theme of Jewishness again in his novel "Raquel, the Jewess of Toledo" (all available from MaKoM---see MaKoM Publications titles).

Jew Süss

"Extraordinary . . . No single historical or fictional work has more tellingly or insightfully depicted . . . the insidious manner in which Nazism began to permeate the fabric of German society than Lion Feuchtwanger's great novel."--New York Times First published in 1934 but fully imagining the future of Germany over the ensuing years, The Oppermanns tells the compelling story of a remarkable German Jewish family confronted by Hitler's rise to power. Compared to works by Voltaire and Zola on its original publication, this prescient novel strives to awaken an often unsuspecting, sometimes politically naive, or else willfully blind world to the consequences of its stance in the face of national events--in this case, the rising tide of Nazism in 1930s Germany. The past and future meet in the saga of the Oppermanns, for three generations a family commercially well established in Berlin. In assimilated citizens like them, the emancipated Jew in Germany has become a fact. In a Berlin inhabited by troops in brown shirts, however, the Oppermanns have more to fear than an alien discomfort. For along with the swastikas and fascist salutes come discrimination, deceit, betrayal, and a tragedy that history has proved to be as true as this novel's astonishing, profoundly moving tale.

The Oppermanns: A Novel

Contemporary

Da Capo Press

Proud Destiny

The Viking Press

Success Three Years in the Life of a Province

Norwood Editions

Carroll & Graf Pub.

1983 CARROLL &amp; GRAF PUBLISHING SOFTCOVER

The Oppermanns

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Books by Feuchtwanger, Lion

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Feuchtwanger, Lion. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Jew Suss

The Jew of Rome: Vol. 2 of the Trilogy of Historical Novels on Josephus, Rome, and Judea

The Emperor and His Jew: Vol. 3 of the Trilogy of Historical Novels on Josephus, Imperial Rome, and Judea

Raquel, the Jewess of Toledo: A Spanish Ballad

Jew Süss

The Oppermanns: A Novel

Proud Destiny

Success Three Years in the Life of a Province

Jew Suss

The Oppermanns