Scum - Hardcover

Singer, Isaac Bashevis

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0374255113 ISBN 13: 9780374255114

Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1991

Synopsis

With his life torn apart by the death of his son, Arturo, Max Barabander leaves Buenos Aires to return to his native Warsaw, where he revisits his past in the thieves' quarter and embarks on a mindless pursuit of sex as an escape from loneliness and fear

About this title

Review:

'Whatever region his writing inhabits, it is blazing with life and actuality' -- Ted Hughes, New York Review of Books

From the Back Cover:

'Whatever region his writing inhabits, it is blazing with life and actuality' Ted Hughes, New York Review of Books

It is 1906. The death of his seventeen-year-old son, Arturo, has disrupted the life of Max Barabander in Buenos Aires, sending him back to his roots in Warsaw. Having attained wealth and respectability after a youth of poverty and a prison stretch for theft, Max revisits scenes of the past in the thieves' quarter in Warsaw, finding congenial underworld company. Visiting his old haunts reminds him of his early religious upbringing and he begins to fear the rabbi will put a curse on him for evil behaviour. As his spiritual disorder accelerates, he is finally driven to violence. A novel that foreshadows the twentieth century's changing mores and loss of ethical values, Scum is an impressive example of the extraordinary talent of a master storyteller.

About this edition

• Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0374255113
• ISBN 13: 9780374255114
• Binding: Hardcover