Samuel Rawet. The Prophet and Other Stories. Nelson H. Vieira, tr. Albuquerque. University of New Mexico Press. 1998. xv + 86 pages. ISBN 0-8263-1952-1.

Lindstrom, Naomi

A short-story writer known principally for his portraits of alienated immigrants who cannot manage to fit in, Samuel Rawet (b. 1929 near Warsaw, d. 1984 in Brazil) has been winning fresh attention in recent years. With the rise of interest in Latin American Jewish writers, Rawet's work has been analyzed in such studies as Regina Igel's Imigrantes judeus, escritores brasileiros (1997; see WLT 72:2, p. 357) and Nelson H. Vieira's Jewish Voices in Brazilian Literature: A Prophetic Discourse of Alterity (1995; see WLT 70:4, p. 942). Now Vieira has edited and translated a selection of Rawet's work, The Prophet and Other Stories, published in the University of New Mexico Press's Jewish Latin America Series (Ilan Stavans, editor).

The Prophet presents twelve stories from four separate collections that Rawet published between 1956 and 1969. Vieira's introduction to the volume is well designed to provide basic background information for readers who may not have any prior acquaintance either with Rawet or with the Jewish population of Brazil. Vieira tactfully summarizes Rawet's growing alienation from the Jewish community. While a number of observers viewed Rawet as anti-Jewish in late life, Vieira points out that the writer misanthropically withdrew from other people and from shared activities, whether or not they had a Jewish character. Though sympathetic to a creative artist who "desperately needed daily solitude," Vieira unhesitatingly speaks of Rawet's "paranoia and hypertension" in the years preceding his death.

After reading the introduction, with its account of Rawet's dim outlook on his fellow human beings, and going through the realistic stories of disoriented immigrants that open the volume, readers may be surprised by the appearance of highly imaginative and occasionally playful elements in many of the narratives found later on. "The Seven Dreams," whose title accurately points to the dream imagery that is its mainstay, features a wild profusion of intermingled narrative fragments. Ranging from forbidden expressions of sexuality to cryptically allegorical sequences, they are jumbled together to create a lurid, out-of-control effect. The plot of "Johnny Golem" has both realistic and fantastic or mystical elements. The title character is, in realistic terms, a Jewish paranoid schizophrenic, originally from Poland, who has somehow ended up in a British army hospital. There he is cruelly subjected to bizarre experiments. On the other hand, "Johnny Golem" is also a reworking of the old tale of the golem, commingled with the story of Frankenstein's monster.

The Prophet is well suited to use in courses on Jewish writing from Latin America. The production of the volume has some shortcomings, beginning with a jacket design that quite nearly obscures the author's name. However, Vieira's introduction makes the volume especially suitable for course adoption, and the choice of stories shows the full range of Rawet's work.

Naomi Lindstrom

University of Texas, Austin