by Isaac Goldemberg

One of the most vivid portraits of the world of early twentieth-century Jews in Latin America can be found in the fiction of Isaac Goldemberg. Goldemberg was born to a Jewish father and a Catholic mother on November 15, 1945, in Chepén, a small town in northern Peru where much of The Fragmented Life of Don Jacobo Lerner takes place. At the age of eight Goldemberg was brought to Lima by his father, and the boy immersed himself in the unfamiliar ways of the Jewish community there. At age 13 Goldemberg transferred to a dramatically different environment, a military academy in which he was the only Jew and had to defend himself from physical attack. After Goldemberg graduated from Leoncio Prado Military Academy, his father sent him to study in Israel. Goldemberg returned to Peru...