Arnold Zweig (1887–1968)

An intriguing and suspenseful novel about the situation in the 1920s British Mandate Palestine. In his afterword, Hans-Albert Walter expressly does not want to see the novel as a key novel in which De Vriendt symbolizes the Dutch gay writer and Zionist and later anti-Zionist Jacob Israel de Haan. In my opinion, Hans-Albert Walter analyzes the novel almost to death in his admittedly very elaborate afterword in which he without any reluctance relates Sigmund Freud's views on the neurotic background of homosexuality to the protagonist (and mind you, written in 1995!).… (more)

Biography of Cathay Williams, an African-American woman who disguised herself as a man and joined the Army, serving in one of the famous "Buffalo Soldier" units during the Indian Wars. Author Phillip Thomas Tucker has attempted the impossible – to write a full length biography of the sole female African American Buffalo Soldier, Cathay (or as he refers to her Cathy) Williams. The former slave Cathay Williams was not surprisingly illiterate, as were her family and friends. Thus very little documentation exists on her early life. The first documents known to historians that pertain to Cathay Williams involve her enlistment in the U.S. Army immediately after the Civil War. Terse military records chronicle her enlistment, her hospitalizations for illness and her eventual discharge, after a period of about 2 years service. The rest of her life is similarly scarcely documented and consists of a marriage record, a pension application and a brief interview done with a newspaper reporter in 1890. With these barest bones of an outline, historian Phillip Thomas Tucker has attempted to write a 250 -page biography. He is consequently forced to indulge in a massive amount of supposition - "she may have," "she could have," "she very well might have," "others in her place frequently did," and "it is possible that she thought." This historian found page after page of unsupported suppositions and might-have-beens both sad and frustrating, because it would be a wonderful thing to be able to have, on the shelf, a full length, informative biography of such an interesting and undoubtedly unique woman.… (more)

I thought Arnold Zweig's novel "The Case of Sergrant Grischa" was a good story, though it kind of dragged on a bit too long in the middle (especially when the conclusion seemed to be so obvious.)

Grischa is a Russian prisoner of war, who walks away from his camp and gets caught up in a troop of German soldiers in a case of mistaken identity. Unfortunately, his new identity is that of a deserter, so things aren't so rosy there either.

This book get reminding me of "Forest of the Hanged" even though plotwise, they aren't super similiar -- and I just kept thinking I'd rather be reading "Forest of the Hanged." Overall, this was an okay book but not one I feel particularly strongly about.… (more)