Memoirs of an Anti-Semite

Five stories trace the sentimental education of a restless, complex, and contradictory man from youth to late middle age. In “Skushno,” the adolescent Gregor is disgraced and exacts revenge on the Jewish boy who is a rival for his aunt’s affection. “Youth” finds him on the run from his aristocratic family, supporting himself as a window dresser, and enmeshed in an unhappy affair with a Jewish woman he calls the “black widow.” Vienna in the years leading up to the Anschluss is the setting for the tale of betrayal, “Troth.” And in “Pravda,” the final story, an older man wanders the streets of Rome and reckons with a life held in thrall by passion and prejudice.