Conspirators
A Novel
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Galicia, Austria-Hungary, 1913. In the castle of a frontier town, on the border between Europe and the East, the worldly, corrupt Count-Governor Wiladowski watches helplessly while a wave of assassinations sweeps the empire, and his province. When a member of his own family is murdered, the count gives broad police powers to his spymaster, Jakob Tausk: a brilliant young Jew whose ruthless war on terror extends into every corner of the province and beyond, enlisting union organizers, financiers, aristocrats and their servants, and a young novelist and playwright, newly arrived in the Vienna of Franz Josef and Freud, hungry for literary success.
In the wake of new terrorist attacks, a mysterious preacher appears in the provincial capital--one of the so-called "wonder rabbis" from the shtetls of the East-trailing a band of fanatical disciples who proclaim him the messiah. Word of the charismatic leader spreads quickly from the Jewish quarter to the castle itself, and soon Tausk finds himself serving two masters: the count and the richest man in the province, Moritz Rotenburg, who has a private interest in the wonder rabbi and whose only son has returned from university, burning for revolution, to gather disciples of his own.
Moving from underground meetings and makeshift synagogues to the bedrooms of country estates and the secret high councils of the ailing thousand-year-old Habsburg Empire, Michael André Bernstein's compelling first novel evokes a densely believable world on the edge of collapse, full of the haunting suggestiveness of a fable or nightmare, and the erotic, mystical, and apocalyptic passions of an age.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A starred or boxed review indicates a book of outstanding quality. A review with a blue-tinted title indicates a book of unusual commercial interest that hasn't received a starred or boxed review.CONSPIRATORSMichael Andr Bernstein. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $25 (512p) Bernstein strives for the authority of a modernist classic in this complex and serious-minded first novel, which tells how the Jewish and Gentile upper classes of an eastern border town of the Austro-Hungarian Empire are riven by revolutionary passions on the eve of WWI. In 1913, various conspiracies brew to overthrow the current regime, locally represented by fearful and Machiavellian Count-Governor Wiladowski. Wiladowski is morbidly obsessed with the possibility of his own assassination; he hires ex-rabbinical student Jakob Tausk to keep an eye on the Jews under his dominion as a precaution. Meanwhile, wealthy and powerful local financier Moritz Rotenburg teams with Tausk to keep his son Hans out of trouble. It seems the impetuous young heir has been dabbling in radical politics as a means of rebellion against his old man. Moses Elch Brugger, a charismatic rabbi with a fire-and-brimstone messianic message, has also established himself in the area, and Tausk and the elder Rotenburg attempt to penetrate and subvert his flock. When Hans's plotting becomes entangled with Brugger's beguiling fanaticism, it seems the Jewish community the true hero of the novel is headed for political disaster. The various political and religious conspiracies come to a head during Passover and Easter weekend, as Wiladowski faces the assassination attempt he's so often dreaded. Bernstein weaves a rich tapestry of Jewish life in the twilight of the Hapsburg empire, though he lingers too lovingly over period details. Similarly, the life-and-death stakes the various characters face lose their urgency in long-winded digression and after-the-fact recounting. Although Bernstein's story never quite shrugs free of its weighty influences, the book is a solid and multifaceted first effort with a sure sense of its time and setting.
