The Last Exile by Jasha M. Levi
I very rarely read books cover to cover in a sitting, especially autobiography, which to me usually seems to be so much an exaggeration of very little. This book is a real page turner, and all the more so because it is a biography that underplays the drama that inspired it rather than the reverse. I was blown away by how much Levi has packed into his life, rubbing shoulders with the great, the ordinary, the good and the bad, the rich and very poor, and all written in a beguilingly modest way. Levi is a good writer, a true artist of the English language, a third or fourth learnt language after his native version of Serbo-Croatian. Levi has very much brushed over his personal tragedies, and avoided boasting his greatest triumphs. His heroes are always someone else, his words always describing a greater truth. This book is so much a tapestry of life, a tapestry of our modern times, a record of social history that should be for ever guarded. The book starts, "I am 89 now. As I sit i...