The new book by Abrasha Rotenberg, at 97 years old

Ironically, the backbone of this set of stories is manifested by Abrasha Rotenberg, who presents herself as an “amateur penman”, when they are stories with a captivating narrative that usually ends with an unexpected twist or a surprising ending. He confesses that for years he had written a novel and when he reached the age of 87 he said to himself: “it’s no good as a novel, but it contains some good stories,” and he dedicated himself to scrapping it to extract them. Now at 97 years old, when he is already preparing a new book, an Argentine edition is coming out (there is a previous one in Spain) of “The desperate muscovite” which is an album of prodigious stories where the typical Jewish humor shines along with a certain Buenos Aires neighborhoodism, the sobering criticism of ideological and religious fanaticism, and a sharp description of human weaknesses. Let’s see. The owner of a chemical products company, looking for a business relationship in Moscow in the final years of the USSR, meets a “desperate Muscovite” who is trying to escape communism, if not him and his wife, then at least his son. , with a fortune that he says he has hidden. A fanatical and virginal member of the Communist Party enters a crisis after being sexually advanced by a calculatedly “simulator” comrade. A young Jewish lawyer is sent to close a deal in Europe and along the way he will find himself captured by a lady who invites him to eat “a fondue.” In “a bus full of loneliness” a Jewish Don Juan discovers that a harsh humiliation tells him that his life has moved on to another season. As a bonus track he delivers a nouvelle that is a sarcastic rant about a certain type of psychoanalyst. Rotenberg was a partner of Jacobo Timerman in the magazines Primera Plana and Confirmado, and in the legendary newspaper La Opinión, of which he was director. He published “The Threatened Opinion”, “Last Letter from Moscow, among other works. He is the father of Ariel Rot and Cecilia Roth, and of this new book.