'For the true schnorrer is all in one: jester, singer, actor, but above all a living newspaper on two legs.'The Prankster of Barnow by Karl Emil Franzos is a late nineteenth-century German novel about a poor Jewish youth in a Galician shtetl who wants to become an actor. His struggles portray the difficulties of East European Jews, particularly those immersed in a Hasidic environment, in aspiring to Enlightenment ideals and Western culture. In Franzos' view, it is narrow-minded religious traditions which prevents the Jews of the east from becoming assimilated into the societies around them. The book is richly comic in a Dickensian vein, as well as deeply moving as it portrays its hero's difficulties. In the process, Franzos creates a whole community of sharply delineated characters, reminiscent of Sholem Aleichem and Isaac Bashevis Singer. Not only the various small-town types—the bigoted rabbi, the garrulous matchmaker, the competing shysters—but also the travelling players, beggars and clergy are depicted in such a way as to delineate an entire bygone eastern European microcosm. Franzos is also expert at describing natural disasters, a deadly snowstorm and a dangerous flood. The Prankster of Barnow has been praised by W. G. Sebald and Omer Bartov for its power and accuracy in portraying a world that was obliterated by two world wars and the Holocaust.ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
