Azarel

This controversial novel, published in 1937, is a semi-autobiographical account of a young boy’s struggle of conscience with the Judaism of his family. Set in provincial Hungary, Gyuri Azarel, the central character is the grandson of Jeremiah, a fundamentalist Orthodox Jew, and the son of a severe rabbi of a modern Jewish sect. Damaged by a period of strict religious observance when an infant in the care of his grandfather, Gyuri becomes unruly and ruthlessly disrespectful of parental authority and of the religion at the centre of family and community life. Although much of the cleverness of the novel is probably lost in this mediocre translation into English, its powerful stream-of-consciousness narrative of the nine-year-old Gyuri’s conscientious rebellion is vivid and captivating.

The author, Károly Pap (né Pollák, born 24 September 1897), grew up in Sopron in western Hungary. His father was the most important rabbi in the city. On finishing school, Pap (pronounced like 'pop') volunteered for the army. He served as an officer on the Italian front and was decorated for bravery. Involved in the shortlived socialist regime of 1919, he was imprisoned and then lived in exile in Vienna from 1923 to 1925. On his return to Hungary, he was soon having poems and short stories published. His first play, Leviát György, written in 1926, details the experience of assimilating Jews serving in the Austro-Hungarian army in the First World War in the context of general hostility towards Jews by the Hungarian majority. His first novel was published in 1932. Having been sent to a labour camp in May 1944, Pap was interned at Buchenwald in November. He's believed to have been taken to Bergen-Belsen in 1945 but the exact circumstances of his death are unknown.

Gyuri’s distressing narrative leads from his imagining “climbing up to the window and falling out”  (and the immediate response of his parents, brother and sister) to imagining his father strangling him to death:
“Now I knew it was all over, that he would strangle me in no time. But I couldn't even bring myself to move, no, I only felt as if my father's hand was twisting, slowly, around my neck from inside the pillow. I gasped for air, then suddenly all was completely silent; and once again I heard that third voice, but more softly than ever: ‘Well, that's it: you're dead, finished, you can't get up anymore and never again will you open your eyes.’ ”