Memoirs of a Fortunate Jew

Hardback

Condition: Good

Humour and irony characterise these memoirs of an extraordinary life explored with the full awareness of the historical reverberations of this century. The author's childhood was spent in Fascist Italy of the 1920s and 1930s. Assimilated Jews the family's relationship to their country was stronger than to their religion and their subsequent fortunes and misfortunes were intricately tied to what would prove to be conflicting loyalties. Nurtured in a world of aristocratic privilege Segre emerged as an adolescent naive and unprepared for the realities that awaited him. The crash of 1929 and the introduction of Mussolini's anti-Jewish laws saw him on the boat to Tel Aviv a rare immigrant with a first-class ticket jacket silk tie and detachable linen collar thrust into the pioneering culture of Palestine in the 1930s. Segre's humour and irony explore the pathos and contradictions of such situations which have characterised his life.