[.ca] Old Men at Midnight (ISBN 0345439988)

This is the midnight...:
An Outstanding perspective of courage and integrity! Midnight is asociated with hard-tough times and jorneys of our lives, where uncertaninty is the only location...journeys where we need to gather of all courage and dignity. So midnight is a time where interior light is the most important tool to keep goodwill going. Midnight means repression, terror coming from the side of the cruel and strong, the merciless, the rulers by overwhelming force. Old age is a time when we have to gather all our forces to face the greatest dilemmas of life. The old man is like the young lion: he knows when and how to fight, but sometimes phisical strenght has beeb left behind, so Old Men needs to be brave to face destiny, oppression and racism. The poem of Rudyard Kippling "The Storm Cone" (1932) illustrate this point: "This is the midnight, let no star delude us, dawn is very far, this is the tempest long foretold, slow to make head, but sure to hold". Still and however, as Jorge Luis Borges wrote: "the past is indestructible and sooner or later comes back...and we need people to recall, to fight the power of the overwhelming leeders, the merciless, the opressors, the racists, the butchers. Chaim Potok is a clever and brilliant author who has given us three different stories seen from the magic perspective of Ileana Davita: the narration of a young survivor of the horror of Holocaust, the vision a secret serviceman who lives the opresion under Stalin and the vision of a veteran Chronist of War and Geopolitics, on the matter of the phantoms of the nightmare of war, as a major disgrace. This is the kind of Book that you are going to talk with your friends. Do not miss it.

Outstanding work about personal integrity.:
Midnight is asociated with journeys trough tough-hard times. The Old age of a person is asociated with a time where physical strenght is not greater than personal determination, values and beleif. Being old at midnight is a crude task, specially when overwhelming powerful forces are oppressing goodwill people. Trough the eyes of a woman along three diffrent stages of her life and from the lips of a teenager surviavor of the holocaust, the voice of a former secret soviet serviceman and from the recalls of an historian, Chaim Potok has given us a brilliant treaty of those who rather face destiny with dignity and integrity, even when that mean a certain death in body, but to live far beyond to stick to goodwill values. A superlative book about an archbuider, a righfull physician and a prophesor of Torah, all they share in common trhe love for life and the gust to face destny and to fight any form of overwhelming oppresion. Ileana Davita carries on a message of integrity and inspiration. This is a must!

Outstanding Trilogy for Riveting One's Imagination!:
In spite of some good reviews,'Specially by Francis McIn_______I am prone to add accolades to off-set those reviewers who are not riveted in their imagination. The ten reviews at the beginning of my copy from such diverse places as Rocky Mountain News; Book Magazine; St.Louis Post-Dispatch; New York Times...Plus New York Jewish Week all point to Potok's historical, literary approach! I began with reading The War Doctor and was quickly mesmerized by the surgery of Doctor Rubinov. As he had performed drastic surgery on the Cossack, Trotsky, he gave extra care to our hero, actually an officers' orderly. It seemed obvious that Chaim Potok returned to his early novels. He pictured Doctor Rubinov caring for the orderly; Possibly due to being taught the Holy Words of Hebrew Prayers. Not solely a good reason to promote him to a Comrade Lieutenant Shertov! Rubinov took the risk of giving him legal papers that sufficed for insurance back to his hometown village. I was again mesmerized by Potok's wonderful description of Benjamin Walter in his third story of the Trope Teacher. "He was sixty-eight, and ailing. A tall, lean, stately man, with thick gray hair, a square pallid face split by a prominent nose and large webbed eyes, brooding behind old-fashioned spectacles." Again I was hooked by his mystical reputation as a writer. It seemed odd, seeing Ilana as I. D. Chandal in the driver's seat of narrating the longest, most detailed of all the trilogy stories. Throughout his narratives, Chaim Potok places Jewish characters as if they are both Holcaust survivors and members of human history and literature. After what I expected to be his greatest writings of The Chosen, The Promise...Asher Lev, here is his mountain peak of writing in the newer genre of short stories. They appear to become riveted into whole creations, yet also Holy Creations! May they reach into hearts of more and more hopeful believers! Retired Chaplain Fred W. Hood

Old Men at Midnight:
Chaim Potok's most powerful book. Symolic, restrained in telling the most extreme events, yet never losing the meaning and passion of his message, Potok has excelled himself.

Have a true look at the Stalin era:
Loved the middle short story. It does transport you back to the Stalin era. What a horrible era.