The People of the Book in the World of Books is a Russian bimonthly publication for serious readers with Jewish interests. Our English website includes only the summaries of the published articles. To access the complete text of them, please visit the Russian version of this website.


93

August 2011

This issue of the magazine includes:


• Names: Primo Levi (1919–1987)


In the 2000s, several books by this Italian writer and Auschwitz survivor have been translated and published in Russian, including his famous novel If This Is a Man. The magazine’s reviewer philosophically analyzes this novel which is currently available to readers in Russia and other post-Soviet countries.


• Review: Bugs on Pins


The new Russian-language guidebook Vilnius: In Search of Traces of the Jerusalem of Lithuania was published by the Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum. The editors included a multitude of facts, pictures, and maps in the book to aid tourists visiting Vilnius. However, they were not able to create an intriguing piece of literature about the great Jewish historical past of the city. A plethora of famous Jewish names have attached to each address without an explanation as to their significance; “it looks like bugs on pins in some entomological collection,” ironically concludes the author of this polemical review.


• Response: Why I Resigned from the Editorial Board of Vladimir Jabotinsky’s Complete Works


Attribution of unsigned texts or texts signed by pseudonyms is among the oldest and most complicated tasks of literary studies. Unfortunately, sometimes it becomes the base for quasi-scientific speculations and fallacious sensations. Sorrowful example of “pseudepigraphy” is represented by the recently issued third volume of Vladimir Jabotinsky’s Complete Works in Russian. The volume includes 14 works that are falsely attributed to the famous Zionist leader and thinker. One former member of this ambitious publishing project’s editorial board, who resigned in protest, provides detailed analysis of the shameful situation and evident proofs that the works in questions could not be written by Jabotinsky.


• Looking Through Russian Literary Magazines: Novels and Articles of Jewish Interest


• Jewish Calendar of Significant Dates: September–October 2011


• Bibliography: 100 New Books