The Passport as Home

Comfort in Rootlessness

Andrei S Markovits author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Central European University Press

Published:19th Aug '21

Should be back in stock very soon

The Passport as Home cover

A Scholar's Quest for Home and Identity

Experience the remarkable story of a Romanian-born, Hungarian-speaking Jewish professor. From Vienna to Columbia and Harvard, he navigates a life marked by rootlessness, seeking comfort and purpose. His journey unfolds against the backdrop of five decades, two continents, and significant political and cultural changes.

As we follow his pursuit of a home, we gain insight into the critical developments of post-1945 Europe and America. Markovits's emigration experiences, first from Romania to Vienna and later from Vienna to New York, shed light on the challenges he faced.

His journey offers a panoramic view of the forces shaping the latter half of the 20th century. Despite America's flaws, he finds it a beacon of academic excellence, intellectual openness, cultural diversity, and religious tolerance—qualities that Europe lacked.


Explore the complexities of identity, culture, and the universal search for belonging in this captivating narrative.

"The great Jew­ish his­to­ri­an Salo Baron defined the ​“lachry­mose school of Jew­ish his­to­ri­og­ra­phy,” that long litany of suf­fer­ing and per­se­cu­tion that for many defines Jew­ish life and his­to­ry. Andy Markovits’s mem­oir is the anec­dote to that school: a sun­ny, opti­mistic, and uplift­ing read. It doesn’t gloss over the sad­ness of post-War Europe, but it shows how that lost world could pro­duce a vital future and how a state­less, root­less per­son could nonethe­less turn that con­di­tion into a ful­filled life." https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/book/the-passport-as-home-comfort-in-rootlessness

-- Martin Green * Jewish Book Council *

"Perhaps the best that one may hope for sometimes is the richness of a life lived without such a destructive set of emotions, the worth of work that is grounded on logic and evidence, the support of people (as the author generously attests to in this memoir) from whom one can learn and with whom one can share insight and understanding. It is this record and these experiences, perhaps above all, which shine brightest out of this evocative memoir."

-- Philip Spencer * Fath

ISBN: 9789633864210

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 500g

328 pages