For all the grimness of its subject, Dan Jacobson's facility of invention makes [The Confessions of Josef Baisz] a surprisingly lighthearted book. He obviously had a lot of fun inventing Sarmeda…. As a political fantasy it is at once playful and provocative, and as a study of the psychology of betrayal—that complex tangle of love, pity, self-hatred, and power-seeking—it is compelling. While a certain off-handedness makes me wonder if Jacobson was bringing all his considerable energies to bear on his subject, he has brought enough of them to make this a supremely amusing fable for our time.

Katha Pollitt, "Books in Brief: 'The Confessions of Josef Baisz'," in Saturday Review (© 1978 by Saturday Review Magazine Corp.; reprinted with permission), Vol. 6, No. 3, February 3, 1979, p. 44.

Josef Baisz, citizen of an imaginary totalitarian state, recounts every detail of his adventures as an informer and duplicitous bodyguard [in "The Confessions of...