A Light for Others & Other Jewish Tales from Galicia

by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Michael T. O'Pecko (Translator)

Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (1836-1895), whose name has been immortalized in the term masochism, is known today predominantly for his novel Venus in Furs and for his tales of dominant women and suffering men. In his own lifetime, however, he was also famous as the author of vibrant tales from Galicia, the exotic eastern edge of the Austrian empire, where he championed the cause of the region's most oppressed minorities, the Ruthenians and the Jews. This collection features some of his best-known Jewish tales which display the authors warm sense of humanity as well as his considerable sense of humor. Sacher-Masoch's unusual ability to capture the essence of a person or place with a telling detail brings the vanished world of Galician Jewry back to life in all its splendor and squalor, mixing the grays, browns, and blacks of European Realism with the bright, sparkling colors of legend, myth, fairy tale, and tradition. Sacher-Masoch's work is currently enjoying a revival among scholars and general readers alike.

Contents: Sacher Masoch Remembered by Carl Spitteler; The Jewish Sects in Galicia; The Red Pepperman's Evil Spirit; Hasara Raba; My Tailor Abrahamek; A Light for Others; Pintschev and Mintschev; Afterword by Translator.

338 pages, Paperback

Published October 28, 1994

About the author

Austrian writer and journalist, who gained renown for his romantic stories of Galician life. The term masochism is derived from his name.
During his lifetime, Sacher-Masoch was well known as a man of letters, a utopian thinker who espoused socialist and humanist ideals in his fiction and non-fiction. Most of his works remain untranslated into English. The novel Venus in Furs is his only book commonly available in English.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_...

Reviews

[Witoldzio · Rating 5 out of 5]

While I am not familiar with Masoch's world-famous novel and have not much interest for it, I enjoyed these Galician stories a lot. Sacher-Masoch was a very talented German-language writer from Austrian Galicia, just like another author, Joseph Roth. Even though Masoch's time period is much earlier than Roth's, the focus of these stories is the same multi-ethnic society. I enjoyed the detailed and sensitive style. I wish more of Masoch's writings were available in English. He is a sad case of a writer whose last name was used to create a medical term (masochism) which then prevented his literary contributions to be fully recognized by general public. I also wish his works were translated into Ukrainian and Polish.