Adam Resurrected concerns a deranged patient in an Israeli hospital: he was a famous clown in pre-war Germany and, when he was arrested by the Nazis, he was made to entertain fellow Jews, including members of his own family, on their way to the gas chambers; he was also made to share a food bowl with a dog belonging to the commandant of the concentration camp. This information is shovelled onto the page in a raving New York style (translated from the Hebrew) together with sick jokes and morbid fantasies. Reading Adam Resurrected was a chore…. [Kaniuk's earlier novel] The Acrophile dealt poetically with race-political guilt, isolation from the world and escape into clownishness. Adam Resurrected is a reworking of the same themes, but so smothered with rant and repulsive detail that the governing concepts are not seen and the connections not made.

D.A.N. Jones, "Bags...