Stéphane Giusti enters the world of literature with a gripping and highly topical book. (…) Epic, funny and poetic, this first novel is a real success. – David Médioni, Franc Tireur

A text as powerful as it is terribly topical. – Minh Tran Huy, Madame Figaro

An astonishing first novel in both style and story, a lush reinterpretation of an Ashkenazi myth. — Livres Hebdo

An astonishing first novel, picaresque and whimsical in the way that Italo Calvino’s stories can be. —Marianne

Something rare, a first novel that fears neither audacity nor ambition. A necessary and contemporary breath of fresh air.  —Ernest

For his first novel, Stéphane Giusti hits the nail on the head. At once realistic and legendary, philosophical and historical, political and fantastic, the novel questions the mystery of anti-Semitism, which is constantly on the rise throughout the world. — La Libre Belgique

Editions Seghers’ highlight of the 2024 Literary Season: A powerful, violent, hallucinatory debut novel that draws from the roots of Ashkenazi legend to recount the exterminatory rage in 20th-century Mitteleuropa.

“I have always dreamed of being an antisemite. Me, the Jew, the stateless, the greedy, the child-stealer, the kike, the rapist of young girls, the vermin, the serpent. How much easier everything would have been, how much simpler everything would be today.”

These are the opening words of the narrator, Aaron Tamerlan Munteanu, born in Romania in 1884 and accidentally transformed into die Royte Yidn, the Red Jew. In Ashkenazi legend, this immortal warrior, towering like a giant with a fiery red mane, is destined to liberate his people from slavery and avenge thousands of years of oppression.

But nothing of the sort happens for Aaron Tamerlan Munteanu. Lacking supernatural powers, he is not the Antichrist the West has feared since the distant Middle Ages. For Munteanu, eternity is a punishment, the curse of a dybbuk that condemns him to witness, year after year, the fate of his people as the sole observer. Confronted with the madness of antisemitism, this epidemic of bloodthirsty rage that drives countries to annihilate entire segments of their populations, the Red Jew roams Mitteleuropa in search of encounters and, perhaps, in the hope of reversing the course of history.

From the trenches of Romania in 1917 to the pogroms in Ukraine and the Holocaust in Poland, his wandering leads him to the Promised Land. But is peace still possible for those who have seen and experienced pure evil?

• A style, a universe, and an ambition strike from the very first pages of this novel. Stéphane Giusti, author and film director, creates very strong characters—starting with his protagonist—and unfolds powerful visions that shake the reader.
• A text nourished by European literature, from Kafka to Bashevis Singer, from concentration camp literature to the literature of the ravines. Additionally, the humor and tenderness of the shtetl give this text a unique voice.
• Burning questions remain at the heart of this dreamed Palestine, meant to provide a refuge but not escaping the violence of history.