Mikhail Sebastian: Journal 1935-44

By MARGIE THOMSON

Compared, inevitably perhaps, with Anne Frank, Sebastian's diary of his experiences as a Jew in wartime Romania will find a less mainstream audience.

Although it is engrossing, with a freshness and frankness of style that is still captivating, it is the story of an era, of a cultural type, rather than of a family, and told not by a child but by a sophisticated, literary man. With its dark themes of opportunism and betrayal, Sebastian's story is almost a parable for his race.

He was, he thought, fully integrated into the society in which he had been born, and by the age of 30, when this journal begins, was a respected literary figure and journalist, popular with the cultural elite, and even with friends among the political elite.

But with the drive towards war Romania, like all European countries, was riven by new forces. One by one, Sebastian's friends turned away, allying themselves with the "anti-Semitic factory".

By journal's end Sebastian is isolated, virtually living on the street after his house was bombed, and not ready to accept the opportunistic hand of friendship now being re-offered by those "friends" who had abandoned him in his hour of desperate need.

Tragically, he died in an accident soon after the war.

William Heinemann $75