The Fragmented Life of Don Jacobo Lerner
by Isaac Goldemberg
University of New Mexico Press, $18.95 paper
Goldemberg’s recently reissued 1976 novel reveals the many aspects and perceptions of Don Jacobo Lerner through diverse narrative voices, newspaper clippings, letters, and official and unofficial documents. This fractured image mirrors the existence of Lerner, a Jew flung by czarist Russia into the Peruvian diaspora. Lerner is a man of contrasts: He is a respected businessman in Lima and the leader of the Hebrew Union of Peru, yet in the outlying village of Chepén he has a bastard son whose tormented life teeters between his Catholic upbringing and Jewish heritage. The characters who are sure of their place in the world seem utterly foolish in contrast with Lerner’s uneasy wanderings. If there is a secret at the heart of this luscious novel, it may be that with the advent of the modern age we have all been cast into our own personal diasporas.
This article appears in September 3 • 1999.