The Little Man from Archangel (Romans Durs)

In this minor-key masterpiece, a gentle bookseller seeks only obscurity until, buffeted by fate and misunderstood by his supposed friends, he makes a shocking decision.

Diffident, bespectacled Jonas Milk, a bookseller and stamp collector, has always lived unobtrusively. His Russian Jewish family of origin was deracinated, or worse, during the world wars. But Jonas found peace, and a kind of belonging, in his small French town. At age thirty-eight, he even converted to Catholicism and marrie...