Mendelssohn Is On The Roof

Full of dark humour and bitter irony, this moving novel traces the transformation of ordinary lives during the Nazi occupation of Prague. Weil is a neglected master of European literature, and this is one of only two of his novels to be translated into English.

About the author

Jirí Weil was born in 1900 in Prague, and was one of the best-known writers in Central Europe in the 1930s and the immediate post-war years. In 1942 Weil escaped transportation to the Nazi camps by faking his own death. He remained in hiding for the rest of the Second World War and his novels Mendelssohn is on the Roof and Life with a Star are based on these experiences. Weil died in 1959.

Summary

SS officer Julius Schlesinger is ordered to remove the statue of the Jewish composer Mendelssohn from the roof of the Prague Academy of Music before an official concert. Unsure which among the decorative statues is Mendelssohn, he tells his men to remove the statue with the biggest nose. Unfortunately, this is the statue of Wagner . . .
This darkly comic and deeply moving novel traces the transformation of ordinary lives during the Nazi occupation of Prague. Weil tells the story of the struggle to survive in a labyrinthine regime, where humour, as well as great courage, required to retain hope and humanity.

Foreword

A remarkable novel about the Holocaust in Prague, with a preface by Philip Roth.

Product details

• Authors: Jiri Weil, Philip Roth
• Assisted by: Marie Winn (Translation)
• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Content: Book
• Product form: Paperback / Softback
• Publication date: 09.06.2011
• Subject: Fiction > Narrative literature
• EAN: 9781907970016
• ISBN: 978-1-907970-01-6
• Pages: 278
• Dimensions (packing): 13 x 19.6 x 2.2 cm
• Weight (packing): 322 g
• Subjects: Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945); FICTION / Literary; Fiction in translation; Modern and contemporary fiction: general and literary