In ["Tor hapelaot" ("The Age of Amazement")] P.A. (never called anything else) is a writer who considers himself more an Austrian than a Jew. As a liberal, he opens his home to a Judeo-Christian Friendship Society. He vituperates at the Jewish petit bourgeoisie and merchants no less vehemently than the most rabid Austrian anti-Semites. It is they who are the root of all evil. Ironically, a series of vicious attacks on his works charging them to be foreign to the pure spirit of Austrian literature is launched by another Jewish writer. So the writing on the wall is there, but P.A. remains oblivious to it with a degree of self-centeredness that is almost pitiful. He fails in his efforts to restore his reputation, and with it comes his failure as father and husband.

The narrator is the twelve-year-old son who records the world about him with...