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180 SHOFAR Summer 2000 Vol. 18, No.4 could have come from Shua's original text of the epilogue. In the Spanish the grandmother is called babuela, a strange fusion of bobbe and abuela, but the English offers the culturally neutral word "granny." The distance between Jewish roots and Argentine practices is deliberately underscored by Shua in this study of the vagaries of memory. Argentina is the other America. It is a world at once distant from the Yiddish culture ofher mother's ancestors and distant from the Golden Land sought by so many Jewish immigrants. As the grandmother laments, ifyou tell someone to stop banging on your tea kettle in Spanish, no one understands. The family has also lost its name, the immigration official, unable to pronounce or spell the original name, creates a hybrid, a new identity, Rimetka. With this translation of Ana Maria Shua, the University ofNew Mexico's Jewish Latin American series shows critical acumen in choosing an important and unique voice from the many outstanding Jewish writers from South ofour borders. This series, edited by Ilan Stavans, has made classics, such as the Argentine Alberto Gerchunoffs Jewish Gauchos, and little known works, such as Venezuelan Alicia Freilich's eMper, available in beautiful, yet affordable editions. One touch, which adds authenticity not present in the Spanish edition, is the lovely photograph of the author's mother, grandmother, and aunt adorning the cover. This book would be an excellent text for college courses in contemporary Jewish fiction and women's studies. A fine addition to the translation is Shua's recent epilogue, which explains some of the boundaries between fiction and reality-how her Lebanese grandparents became melded with her Polish ones in her work-and how successive generations of her family have had to emigrate because ofthe military dictatorship of 1976-1983. Shua loves Yiddish culture and continues to study and popularize it. She also loves Argentina, and her fiction explores the pains and pleasures ofbeing Jewish in Argentina at the end ofthe twentieth century. Lois Barr Lake Forest College The Prophet and Other Stories, by Samuel Rawet, translation and introduction by Nelson H. Vieira. Albuquerque, NM: University ofNew Mexico Press, 1998. 86 pp. Samuel Rawet (1929-1984) was born in Klimontow, Poland, which was destroyed during World War II. He and his mother left this small town outside Warsaw andjoined his father in a working-class suburb of Rio de Janeiro in 1936. A separation of three years created tensions in his family which their precarious financial situation did nothing to alleviate. Although he collaborated with other writers ofhis generation and also participated in the innovative experiment of creating the capital Brasilia as an engineer, he lived his life as a loner. Book Reviews 181 His characters' monologues offutility, displacement, anger, and fear must express the alienation and frustration felt by this sensitive and creative man ofmany talents. In brief vignettes Rawet speaks to the bitterness of Jewish immigrants who survived a Holocaust to arrive on the distant and umemittingly different shore ofBrazil. The heat, their skin color, the language, the food, and the music separate them from the Brazilians. The newly arrived do not assimilate as do Jewish families from before the War. Old grudges do not die. In the story, "Lisbon by Night," a German introduces himself as Dutch and feigns an interest and fascination with the Jews only to drink to the point where the old hatred and fear return to the surface. In an ironic inversion, the Nazi feels hunted by the Jews. In "The Prayer" the children throw rocks at an old immigrant woman. They taunt her and spy on her as she prepares for the Sabbath by lighting the candles. Although his family is anxious to hear stories of his suffering in the Holocaust when he first arrives, the "prophet" who gives title to the volume soon finds himself ignored and even the object of ridicule. When his Brazilian Jewish relatives go on vacation, he quietly returns to Europe. His face turns back toward Europe when he is on the gangplank ofthe boat, an orientation which would be echoed in the stance of the hero ofanother Jewish writer in...

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