Homecoming

by Joseph Wechsberg

Overview

Published by Knopf in 1946 as an expanded version of a two-part New Yorker article.

Joseph Wechsberg and his wife left Czechoslovakia for America in 1938. Sent with the US Army to liberate Europe from the Nazis, Wechsberg returns to Ostrava, the town where he grew up. Searching for his wife's parents, he discovers the devastation of World War II, hears first-hand accounts of its atrocities, witnesses the antics of Red Army soldiers, and remembers his childhood � discovering in the end that home is no longer Ostrava, but California.


�[�] a moving, brilliantly written account of [Wechsberg's] return to his home-town, Moravia Ostrava (Maehrisch Ostrau) [�]. As in his earlier stories in The New Yorker, almost every ounce of sentiment in Homecoming was set off by an equal measure of irony.� � Richard Plant, The New York Times

�A short and very personal book, [�] a personal footnote to current European history. [�] Affecting and convincing impressions of a shattered world.� � Kirkus Reviews

Product Details

BN ID:	2940016638911
Publisher:	Plunkett Lake Press
Publication date:	04/26/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	118
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Joseph Wechsberg (1907-1983) was born to Jewish parents in Ostrava, Moravia, a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His grandfather had been a prosperous banker, but the family assets were lost in World War I. Wechsberg attended Prague University Law School, Vienna�s State Academy of Music, and the Sorbonne. A lawyer for a short while, he worked as a musician on ocean liners and played the violin in Paris nightclubs. In Prague, he became a reporter for the Prager Tagblatt. In 1938 he was a lieutenant in the Czechoslovak army commanding a machine gun company on the Polish frontier and was sent with his wife to the United States to discuss the Sudeten crisis. Both requested asylum after World War II broke out. In 1939, Wechsberg knew only a few hundred words in English, but decided he would someday write for The New Yorker. In 1943, he was drafted into the US Army and sent to Europe as a technical sergeant in psychological warfare. His account of getting back to Ostrava was the first of over one hundred pieces for The New Yorker over three decades � profiles of Artur Rubinstein, Isaac Stern, George Szell, of merchant bankers and of great French restaurateurs, and letters from Berlin, Karlsbad, Bonn, Vienna, Trieste, Budapest, Belgrade, Ankara, Bucharest, Warsaw, Athens, and Baghdad. He also contributed hundreds of articles to magazines such as Gourmet, Esquire, Playboy, The Atlantic and The Saturday Evening Post and wrote features on cuisine and travel throughout Europe.