Professor Schiff's Guilt

(Paperback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

"A daring post-colonial satire . . .Its a blistering skewering, and as sharp as it is funny."Publishers Weekly(Starred Review)

A stellar novel rendered into a darkly comic, unforgettable narrative by Booker International Prize winning translator Jessica Cohen.An Israeli professor travels to a fictitious West African nation to trace a slave-trading ancestor, only to be imprisoned under a new law barring successive generations from profiting off the proceeds of slavery. But before departing from Tel Aviv, the protagonist falls in love with Lucile, a mysterious African migrant worker who cleans his house. Entertaining and thought-provoking, this satire of contemporary attitudes toward racism and the legacy of colonialism examines economic inequality and the global refugee crisis, as well as the memory of transatlantic chattel slavery and the Holocaust. Is the professors passion for Africa merely a fashionable pose and the book he's secretly writing about his experience there nothing but a modern version of the slave trade

Reviews

"A daring post-colonial satire about a professor who inadvertently gets wrapped up in human trafficking in modern-day Tel Aviv . . . The author takes a clear-eyed view of the horrors of slavery and its present-day consequences . . . It's a blistering skewering, and as sharp as it is funny."
--Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

"In this very funny, wise, and rueful novel, the cranky hero thrashes around in the coils of guilt, atonement, desire, and shame once he learns that a distant relative was a slave trader. (There's other bad stuff, not nearly so distant.) But really, he's no more culpable than we all are--and no less."
--James Traub, author of Judah Benjamin: Counselor to the Confederacy and Foreign Policy magazine columnist

"An aging Israeli academic reckons with his family's crimes--and his own . . . with how--and if--the people of the present can atone for the unresolved horrors of the past . . . Professor Schiff's Guilt is an incisive novel in which deep-seated prejudices lurk behind good intentions and pleasant words."

--Foreword Reviews

"Deftly raises important contemporary issues--including how accountable should we be for the sins of our ancestors--without losing sight of the comedy that lies at the heart of tragedy."

--Wayne Grady, author of Emancipation Day and Up From Freedom

"Not only a hilarious satirical novel full of self-deprecation, but also a topical and very relevant book, which cleverly ridicules the self-righteous and should finally place its author alongside the most prominent writers."
--Haaretz

"One of the most thrilling and thought-provoking novels I've read in the past year . . . Schiff writes with simplicity, full of charm and humor."
--Israel Hayom

"A wonderful and brilliant book . . . a very entertaining book, rich with imagination and literary innovations."
--Walla

Author Bio

Agur Schiff, born in 1955 in Tel Aviv, is a graduate of Saint Martin's School of Art in London and the Rijks Art Academy in Amsterdam. He has worked as a filmmaker, started writing fiction in the early 1990s, and has published two short story collections and six novels. Schiff, professor emeritus at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem, has been awarded the Israeli Prime Minister's Prize.

Jessica Cohen shared the 2017 Man Booker International Prize with author David Grossman for her translation of A Horse Walks into a Bar. She has translated works by Amos Oz, Etgar Keret, Dorit Rabinyan, Ronit Matalon, Nir Baram, and others.