Although The Class was written in 1927, its themes remain timeless: the struggle of a teacher to regain power over his unruly class and the personal trauma involved in keeping a dying marriage alive. Joseph Blau does not have a good life. His pupils are out of control, his enigmatic wife, Selma, is too attractive to other men, and his mother-in-law, Mathilda, is a loud, coarse embarrassment who lives in his house.¨The Class has dark undertones, as Blau's struggles to overcome his insecurities and to remain ordered and in control, propels him towards catastrophe. Ungar portrays obsession, poverty and deceit with a wonderfully grotesque attention to detail: the character of Uncle Bobek does not just eat, he wipes the fat off his moustache with the fleshy back of his hand, and washes the half-chewed hunks of flesh down with gulps of wine.¨Joseph Blau's exaggerated sense of guilt ultimately leads to his downfall in this well-translated novel. Vanessa Curtis in The Herald
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