Benjamin's Crossing: A Novel
by Jay Parini
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Description
The acclaimed and now-classic biographical novel of Walter Benjamin's last days--adapted into screenplay by Jay Parini. It is 1940. For the past decade, Walter Benjamin--the German-Jewish critic and philosopher--has been writing his masterpiece in a library in Paris, a city he loves. Now Nazi tanks have overrun the suburbs, and Benjamin is forced to flee. With a battered briefcase that contains his precious manuscript of a thousand handwritten pages, he sets off for the border and is led by show more chance to a young anti-Nazi who is taking Jews and other refugees over the Pyrenees into Spain, where they may (with luck) make their way to freedom in Portugal or South America. Beloved biographical novelist Jay Parini's thrilling tale of escape is beautifully interwoven with vignettes of Benjamin's complex, cosmopolitan past: his privileged childhood in Berlin, his years with the German Youth Movement, his university days. His close friendship with Gershom Scholem, the eminent scholar of Jewish mysticism, and many other well-known artists and intellectuals who were part of Benjamin's intimate circle between the two world wars. Part tragedy, part dark comedy, this sharply realized historical novel tells one of the great and most moving peripheral stories of the Holocaust. show lessTags
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Member Reviews
Read a chunk but didn’t finish. I enjoy Parini’s writing but this is a bit depressing.
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Lives of the Poets (and Philosophers)
110 works; 5 members
Author Information
73+ Works 3,136 Members
Jay Parini was born in Pittston, Pennsylvania in 1948. In 1970 he graduated from Lafayette College and he received a doctorate from the University of St. Andrews in 1975. Before becoming a professor of Engliah and Creative Writing at Vermont's Middlebury College in 1982, Parini taught at Dartmouth College. Parini writes poetry, novels, show more biographies, and criticism, and he has published numerous reviews and essays in major journals and newspapers. He co-founded the New England Review in 1976. In 1995, he was appointed literary executor for author Gore Vidal. A film version of The Last Station, his 1990 novel, was released in 2009. Parini's novel, One Matchless Time: A Life of William Faulkner, made the New York Times bestseller list in 2015. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Some Editions
Common Knowledge
- Original publication date
- 1997
- People/Characters
- Walter Benjamin; Lisa Fittko
- Important places
- Paris, France; Pyrenees; Spain
- Important events
- Holocaust; World War II
- Epigraph
- I came into this world under the sign of Saturn-star of the slowest revolution, planet of detours and delays_ Walter BENJAMIN
- Dedication
- For Devon, every word of it
- First words
- Port - Bou, Spain: 1950. Here I stand, a man who did not even weep at the death of his own parents, weeping for Walter Benjamin, my dear lost friend.
- Blurbers
- Vidal, Gore; Jong, Erica; Oz, Amos
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 133
- Popularity
- 244,620
- Reviews
- 1
- Rating
- (3.67)
- Languages
- English, German, Portuguese
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 11
- ASINs
- 3
