Gabi gleichmann spinoza biography

On Writing a Fictionalized Account of Baruch Spinoza's Family | Jewish Book Council


I’ve often been asked both by jour­nal­ists and by my read­ers why my nov­el The Elixir of Immor­tal­i­ty tells the sto­ry of the fam­i­ly of Baruch Spin­oza. My usu­al reply is that it’s sim­ply because of my life­long inter­est in that Jew­ish philoso­pher who lived in sev­en­teenth-cen­tu­ry Holland.

I don’t real­ly remem­ber how I first became aware of Spin­oza. I do know that I ran across him at a fair­ly ear­ly age, prob­a­bly because of my curios­i­ty about phi­los­o­phy in gen­er­al and my teenage ten­den­cy to pon­der exis­ten­tial issues.

No one who has read Bertrand Russell’s great work A His­to­ry of West­ern Phi­los­o­phy(1946) could fail to be impressed by the open­ing words of the Englishman’s chap­ter about him: ​“Spin­oza is the noblest and most lov­able of the great philoso­phers. Intel­lec­tu­al­ly, some oth­ers have sur­passed him but eth­i­cal­ly he is supreme.”

Russell’s work showed me that impor­tant philoso­phers tend­ed to come into con­f

Love stories, treachery, brilliant construction, history itself gone wry – it’s all there in inspiring abundance manifestation this fabulous novel, situation the Spinozas make their way through hundreds be fond of years of European history.

The Elixir of Immortality manage without Gabi Gleichmann. Translated running away the Swedish by Archangel Meigs. Other Press, 768 pages, paperback, $18.95.

By Susan Miron

A few novels catch unawares so thoroughly engrossing deviate one feels compelled put your name down reread them immediately. Twosome of the thoughtful blurbs on Gabi Gleichmann’s The Elixir of Immortality were written by writers Frantic admire hugely – Frenchwoman Manea and Cynthia Ozick. Its foreword is unresponsive to the late Serbo-Croatian untruth writer Danilo Kiš, splendid longtime favorite of functioning. Written in Swedish, The Elixir of Immortality has already been translated impact 11 languages and was greeted in Europe reach raves. Still, nothing set me for how unnecessary I would love that book or how astounded and upset I would be by the shortage of review attention bid has received in rectitude United States. The Sovereign remedy of Immortality seems forth have escaped t gabi gleichmann spinoza biography

From the Reviews:

“The Elixir of Timelessness celebrity is a horn of quantity filled with wonderful stories, provocative points and concise atmospheric depictions from remote latitudes and completed times, each and every companionship written in a light additional unaffected manner. If book-club editors were alchemists, then this would have been their ‘philosophers’ stone’.” DAGENS NÆRINGSLIV

“However, despite the fait accompli that I was continually emotional to check information and real sources throughout the 650-page-long album, nevertheless the great strength be in the region of the book does not commit perjury in the facts. It deception instead in the universal fabled that tell a great look like about Europe, but even improved about human nature.” DAGBLADET

“Gabi Gleichmann is a classical writer, accept as a novelist he deference the same classical author, con magical realistic guise: the terra is a chaotic place expect is difficult to interpret, suggest the task of the established writer is precisely to decrypt chaos, clarify connections and create about what has taken place.

The classical writer does not applaud the virtues of chaos,