Novel
The Celibacy of Felix Greenspan
Lionel Abrahams · 1977
Synopsis
Felix Greenspan, the disabled son of middle-class Jewish parents, grows up in the suburbs of Johannesburg. The book follows his education, from home and special schools to the University of the Witwatersrand, the bullying by a classmate who admires Hitler, and his conquest of independence: at fifteen, he learns to board trams and buses on his own. Two long narratives are devoted to his teachers, Skipper Ross and Johan de Waal. As an adult, Felix writes, seeks love and desire despite rejections, and falls for a painter, Lucilla Maxwell.
Context
The book appeared in Johannesburg in 1977, under the subtitle “a novel in eighteen stories”; it was its author's first book, published when he was nearly fifty. Tony Voss, who reviewed it in the journal Reality, doubted this composition, the stories sometimes repeating themselves, but judged the childhood episodes the strongest and saw in it the picaresque account of a sensibility rather than of a character. An American edition appeared from Academy Chicago, and Felix returned in 2002 in a sequel. Nadine Gordimer compared the place of this character among the country's young readers to that of a Salinger hero among young Americans.
Who it is for
A short book, about a hundred pages in English, made up of stories that can be read separately; not translated into French.
Prizes and reception
Hailed by the Mail & Guardian as a striking autobiographical work, it made Felix Greenspan a character known to young readers.
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