Enemies – A Love Story by Isaac Bashevis Singer is one of The 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read, but only 2322nd on The Greatest Books of All Time site, my own evaluation would place it somewhere between, following the Golden Mean of Aristotle…you find thousands of reviews of magnum opera from the aforementioned and other web pages on my blog https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html

 

Enemies – A Love Story by Isaac Bashevis Singer is one of The 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read, but only 2322nd on The Greatest Books of All Time site, my own evaluation would place it somewhere between, following the Golden Mean of Aristotle…you find thousands of reviews of magnum opera from the aforementioned and other web pages on my blog  https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html

 

8 out of 10

 

Enemies – A Love Story has the Holocaust at its core and I was reminded of https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/01/mans-search-for-meaning-by-victor-frankl.html Man’s Search for Meaning, the classic by Victor Frankl, who has been through the extermination camps – ‘where there is a will, there is a way’

 

The Holocaust is the cause of (almost) all that happens in the narrative, except of course Herman Broder is a peculiar, outré (anti) hero, he is married to Yadwiga, the Polish woman who saved his live during World War II, he has a mistress, Masha, and then his late wife ‘rises from the dead, in New York, after being shot dead in Poland…

This is not a surrealist story, Masha had been shot by the Nazis, together with their children, she survived and they did not, Herman had been told she was dead, therefore he thought he must show gratitude to the human being who had hidden him in the hay, on the farm https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/07/portnoys-complaint.html Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth came to mind

 

Desolation seems to be the main feeling, although the humor is also acute, one has to try and find a way to overcome the immense tragedy of the Holocaust, Herman and the other characters, in various degrees, see the Nazis everywhere, after the abominations, horrendous torture, killings, humiliations, betrayal, destruction, they are overwhelmed

“At times, when Herman fantasized about a new metaphysic, maybe a new religion, he based everything on the attraction of the sexes. In the beginning was lust. The godly, as well as the human, principle is desire…” he appears to be Dazed and Confused https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/12/dazed-and-confused-written-and-directed.html

 

He married Yadwiga more out of pity, or I should say compassion – pity we feel for those we put on a lower level, I have that from Kundera, if I remember well – albeit they may have a baby, when she gets pregnant, witch acerbic determination, she wants to covert and join the Judaic faith, even if Herman is not changed

Masha has been pressuring him to marry, despite the fact that he is already, she wants a Jewish ceremony, for her mother, she says, and she finds one rabbi that will not ask for the official, civil certificate…Herman Broder is in fact angry with God, he calls him Hitler at some point, the pain of the war is so obvious

 

‘How could God watch all the horror and do nothing’ that is one argument we find in this novel and many other places, and the answer comes from https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/01/surprised-by-joy-shape-of-my-early-life.html CS Lewis, humans have Free Will, it is not up to God to determine everything

 

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