Erland Josephson is a prolific Swedish novelist who is perhaps best known as an actor celebrated for his work in Ingmar Bergman's films. A Story about Mr. Silberstein, Josephson's first book to appear in English, shows him to be a master of narrative form and style: inventive, witty, and darkly humorous.
Through the central figure of Emanuel Silberstein, an aging, unsuccessful cosmetics wholesaler whose reclusive nature and Jewish faith arouse the suspicion of his neighbors, the novel draws readers into an exploration of identity and the futile attempt to define a self "independent" of others. With a sharp eye on the Swedish milieu, Josephson probes the roots of anti-Semitism and thus of prejudice and self-deception in general while documenting the travails of ordinary citizens struggling to rebuild their lives in post-World War II Sweden.
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