Angel Wagenstein, an octogenarian screenwriter from Bulgaria who recently turned to writing novels, first gained attention in the English-speaking world with his 2007 novel Farewell, Shanghai, a fascinating ensemble piece about German and Austrian Jews fleeing Nazism for the relative safety of China. Thanks once again to translators Elizabeth Frank and Deliana Simeonova, English-language readers have access again to this gifted storyteller. With Isaac’s Torah, Wagenstein resurrects a Jewish literary archetype—the virtuous “fool”—yet endows the character with sagacity instead of saintliness; seemingly dim-witted but inwardly shrewd, Isaac Jacob Blumenfeld often finds that the only way to survive danger is to play the idiot. Armed with Yiddish lore and the wide-ranging advice of a colorful brother-in-law who is alternately a rabbi and an atheist, this simple tailor’s son from the shtetl of Kolodetz tries to navigate a course through the great terrors of his age. Indeed, despite Isaac’s general indifference to the world, the vicissitudes of the 20th century turn his life upside down: “I wasn’t very interested in politics, while politics itself was showing a growing interest in me.” Within the space of a few decades, Kolodetz passes from the Austro-­Hungarian Empire to Poland to the Soviet Union to Nazi Germany and back to the Soviet Union. Isaac’s own relocation to Vienna marks the conclusion of a harrowing odyssey, as the subtitle puts it, “through two world wars, three concentration camps and five motherlands.” Along the way, he experiences the “all-devouring and blood-thirsty Moloch” that is the Soviet justice system as well as Germany’s descent into barbarism. In a Nazi concentration camp not de... Continued