The Death of Ahasuerus

by Pär Lagerkvist

This novel by the great Swedish novelist and Nobel Prize winner will hold different meanings for different people, but whatever construction is put upon its symbolism, readers will find in it a... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0000CLDXU
• ISBN13: 9781122694131
• Release Date: January 1962
• Publisher: Random House
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A truely existential story

This small and easily readable volume deals with the legend of the wandering jew whose name is Ahasuerus. In this story like the original legend Ahasuerus is present when Jesus Christ is being led away to his execution. For making a flippant or nasty remark to Jesus he is cursed by him to eternal life. From then on he becomes a changed man and no longer his old self. When he goes back home to his wife and child he finds that he can no longer relate to them in the same manner. He suffers a sense of alienation from everything and everyone around him.In the book Ahasuerus like so many of us questions life and the concept of fate when in his own special way he asks himself "Why me of all people?"He cannot understand why of all people he would be the one cursed by christ to live forever when there were others who mocked and even helped to crucify him.In comparison to them he doesn't find himself any worse or better so for him the question remains why him and not someone else? However throughout the story the answere eludes him and he never finds out. For him and for the rest of us the truth is probably this.That there really is no answer or at least not a fair or logical one. Perhaps like the rest of us he is merely a victim of blind chance.This novel by Par Lagerkvist is truely a modern version of an age old legend rendered suitable or compatible for our times.It is an existential portrait of Ahasuerus as everyman struggling for an explanation for why things are and why he is where he is.The author has done well in portraying this mythical figure as a truely human character that one can easily relate to rather than some distant supernatural or superhuman being.This story reminds me very much and is similar to his other novel "Barrabas".For those with a taste for existentialist literature these novels by Par Lagerkvist are highly reccomended.It is good reading for those who like to ponder.