A Curable Romantic — Joseph Skibell

In this brilliant, inventive tour de force, Joseph Skibell presents an unforgettable character, a lovelorn Candide wandering optimistically through modern history. Along the way, the amorous ghost of his wife -- whom he abandoned on their wedding day when he was just twelve -- pursues and haunts him.

Our young hero, Dr. Jakob Sammelsohn, arrives in Vienna in 1890, befriends Sigmund Freud, and is led into the arms of Emma Eckstein, one of Freud's most famous patients. Later, he romances the beautiful and wealthy Loe Bernfeld, who leads him into the world of Esperanto and the universal language movement. And finally he finds himself in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1940, where he becomes a pawn in a battle over the path to heaven.

A Curable Romantic is a novel of personal and historical exile that could spring only from the imagination of a virtuoso. Often fantastical yet always grounded in tradition, it is that rare literary feat -- a truly incomparable tale, peopled with characters who live on in the memory.