Journalist Sasha Abramsky's first book is a warmhearted, frank memoir of his bibliophile grandfather, scholar and collector Chimen Abramsky, and the extraordinary book-filled London home where he lived for 66 years.
The son of prominent Orthodox rabbi Yehezkel Abramsky, Chimen rejected Judaism for another religion--Communism--as a young man. Though lacking a degree from a British university, he went on to become a leading scholar of Marxism and collector of Marxist literature. His books packed every available space in what his grandson calls the House of Books, in North London's Highgate neighborhood. By 1958, however, Chimen, disillusioned by the revelations of Stalin's atrocities and anti-Semitism, had severed his ties with the Communist Party. That repudiation ushered in the second phase of his intellectual life, as his interests pivoted to Jewish literature and Judaica.
Without a catalogue of his grandfather's library, Abramsky acknowledges that the book count reflected in his title may be imprecise, but as he describes the "staggering" number of books, it's easy to picture the "unfathomable clutter" that defined the home. The book is structured around a tour of its cramped rooms, each one "lined from floor to ceiling with shelves double-stacked with books, with just a few bare spots left in which paintings and photographs hung."
Balancing affection with a sense of awe at the story of his grandfather's fascinating life, Sasha Abramsky has produced a work that will appeal to book lovers and readers of family memoir. --Harvey Freedenberg, attorney and freelance reviewer