Description:
The Five is an captivating novel of the decadent fin-de-siècle written by Vladimir Jabotinsky (1880-1940), a controversial leader in the Zionist movement whose literary talents, until now, have largely gone unrecognized by Western readers.
Brief description: Vladimir Jabotinsky was a Russian Jewish Revisionist Zionist leader, author, poet, orator, soldier and founder of the Jewish Self-Defense Organization in Odessa. With Joseph Trumpeldor, he co-founded the Jewish Legion[2] of the British army in World War I. Later he established several Jewish organizations in what was then called Palestine, including Beitar, HaTzohar and the Irgun.
Review Quotes:
This autobiographical novel was first published in Russian in Paris in 1936. Set in the Odessa of the author's youth and narrated by a character much like himself, it recounts the fortunes of a Jewish family, the Milgroms, through whom we witness the rise and fall of Jewish Odessa from the beginning of the twentieth century to the Russian Revolution. It also offers a fervent account of the temporary success and ultimate failure of Jewish assimilation in the Russian empire. The Five portrays the lost world of Odessa's Jews in all its color and vitality, its historical vulnerability and perennial optimism; now appearing in English, it is bound to become indispensable for American literary fiction readers and students of Jewish-Russian literature.
-- "Booklist"