““Jerk the tinkler!” These words, in plain English, conveyed an injunction to ring the bell. It was answered by another Jew: younger than Fagin, but nearly as vile and repulsive . . .”

I had heard the rumors that the character of Fagin was an antisemitic caricature but I had no idea there would be so little ambiguity about the matter. After reading Twist I must say that that the bigotry seems almost inarguable. Fagin, one of Dickens’ most despicable creations, is more often referred to as “the Jew” (326 times by my count) than by his name (306 times). And it appears that the more nefarious his actions are in a particular scene the more likely Dickens is to refer to him simply as the Jew. No other characters are narrated with such obvious malice—with the possible exception of Monks who is once referenced as “the villain” and twice as “the coward.”

The question is, how does this blatant bigotry weigh on an otherwise magnificent novel? Should we give Charles a pass because of the era in which he wrote (1838) or should we hold him to higher standards? 4 stars (for now) while I think this through.

Das war mein erster Dickens.
Hab mir „David Copperfield“ bestellt.
Demnach mochte ich also Dickens Stil sehr.

Oliver Twist kommt zur Welt im England des 19. Jahrhunderts.
Seine Mutter verstirbt bei seiner Geburt, der Vater ist unbekannt und somit wächst Oliver zunächst als Waise in einem Armenhaus auf.
Zu Beginn der Geschichte erfährt der kleine Junge permanent Misshandlung und Verachtung. Jedoch sehnt er sich nach Liebe und Geborgenheit.
Wir begleiten Oliver auf einigen Stationen in seinem jungen Leben. Die meisten Menschen in seiner Umgebung sind berechnend und benutzen ihn für kriminelle Machenschaften.

Dickens erzählt mit Olivers Geschichte auch die gesellschaftlichen Missstände. Er zeigt auf, wie groß die Schere zwischen arm und reich ist und veranschaulicht, wie unausweichlich ein krimineller Weg für manche Menschen ist.
Die reiche Gesellschaft bedingt regelrecht die Kriminalität in diesen Zeiten. Hier gilt die Lehre des Utilitarismus. Kurz: Jeder ist sich selbst der Nächste und Wohltätigkeit existiert so gut wie gar nicht bzw. dient nicht dem eigenen Zweck.

Dickens beschreibt hier also gesellschaftliche Realitäten und zeigt Missstände auf.
Ich liebe es einfach, dass er selbst ein großer Menschenfreund war und sich in seinen Werken damit auseinandersetzte.
Er hat einen sehr einfachen Schreibstil. Zwischen Gut und Böse kann jede(r) sofort unterscheiden. Wobei Dickens auch auf Grautöne hinweist.

Das Buch war sehr berührend, spannend und manchmal ehrlicherweise auch etwas kitschig. Aber ich habe es geliebt.
Dickens schafft ein sehr authentisches, zum Teil sehr düsteres Setting und man wandelt mit den Protagonist:innen durch die kalten und düsteren Gassen Londons.

Im Anhang der Ausgabe befindet sich ein Überblick über Dickens Lebensstationen, die aufzeigen, dass auch er in seiner Kindheit einige Zeit massiv unter der sozialen Situation seiner Familie zu leiden hatte.
Ich habe ebenso gelesen, dass David Copperfield sein liebstes Werk war, da er viele autobiografische Erlebnisse darin untergebracht hat. Also wahrscheinlich damit sein persönlichstes Werk.
Daher war für mich klar, was ich als nächstes von ihm lesen möchte.

Von mir eine absolute Empfehlung .

„Приключенията на Оливър Туист“ е много силен и трогателен роман! Дикенс е описал по увлекателен и реалистичен начин трудния живот на бедните хора и обществените проблеми през Викторианската епоха в Англия. Освен това, писателят умело е поставил важни теми за размисъл, разказвайки историята на тежкото детство и перипетиите на сирака Оливър...




„Щастливо време беше то. Дните бяха мирни и спокойни, нощите не носеха със себе си нито страх, нито грижи. Детето вече не чезнеше в тежък затвор, нито пък се събираше с пропаднали хора, то бе обхванато само от щастливи и приятни мисли. Всяка сутрин Оливър отиваше при белокос стар господин, който живееше близо до малката черквичка. Той го учеше да чете по-добре и да пише. Старецът му говореше така мило и се занимаваше с него така усърдно, че Оливър всячески се стараеше да му хареса. След това се разхождаше с мисис Мейли и с Роза и слушаше техните разговори за различни книги. Понякога седеше край тях на някое сенчесто място и не пропускаше нищо от това, което младото момиче четеше. Той би седял така, докато мракът вече не би позволил да се виждат буквите.“

n  n

I looooooooved this book. Another Dickens...another favorite. 'Please, sir, I want some more.'

Jane Austen and Charles Dickens have been dueling inside my WOW center for some time in a titanic, see-saw struggle for the title of greatest word-smither/story-crafter in all of English literature. Ms Austen previously caused heart-palpitations and a slew of gasms with Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility which left me spent like a cheap nickel. However, Sir Dickens, being a slick, wily devil responded in kind with A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations, a pair of wonderfully addictive, tingle causing joy blasts full of jaw-drops and breezy elegance.

Where this battle of master word charmers will end….I could really care less because I’m sporting a complete happy going through their respective catalogs with a perma-smile on my face.

Next up on the parade of mouth-watering, phrase turning feasts is The Adventures of Oliver Twist which is terrific on several levels. In relating the tragic (but ultimately rewarding) life of Oliver Twist, Dickens is at his most Austenesque as he employs with great effect biting sarcasm and dry, dark humor to scathingly satire the English Poor Laws of the 1830s. Of the novels I’ve read by Dickens, this is him at his most “socially conscious” and he strategically uses Oliver’s biography to harshly spotlight the greed, hypocrisy and let’s just say it…evil…of the society that organized and profited by the work house system of the middle 19th century.

n  So they established the rule, that all poor people should have the alternative (for they would compel nobody, not they,) of being starved by a gradual process in the house, or by a quick one out of it.n

We follow Oliver beginning with his difficult birth that killed his mother and almost cost the young lad his life as well.

n  [T]here was considerable difficulty in inducing Oliver to take upon himself the office of respiration- a troublesome practice, but one which custom has rendered necessary to our easy existence…n

From there we journey with the child as he is dumped into a workhouse where his early life goes from bad to horrendously shitty as he’s subjected to a systematic process of neglect, physical brutality and starvation along with the other children residing there.

Here is a passage from Chapter 2 that I think perfectly encapsulates the subtly sarcastic style Dickens employs to address his subject matter.

n  The parish authorities magnanimously and humanely resolved, that Oliver should be ‘farmed,’ or, in other words, that he should be dispatched to a branch-workhouse some three miles off, where twenty or thirty other juvenile offenders against the poor-laws rolled about the floor all day, without the inconvenience of too much food, or too much clothing, under the parental superintendence of an elderly female who received the culprits at and for the consideration of sevenpence-halfpenny per small head per week.

Sevenpence-halfpenny’s worth per week is a good round diet for a child; a great deal may be got for sevenpence-halfpenny, quite enough to overload its stomach, and make it uncomfortable. The elderly female was a woman of wisdom and experience; she knew what was good for children; and she had a very accurate perception of what was good for herself. So, she appropriated the greater part of the weekly stipend to her own use, and consigned the rising parochial generation to even shorter allowance than was originally provided for them. Thereby finding in the lowest depth a deeper still; and proving herself a very great experimental philosopher.

Everybody knows the story of another experimental philosopher who had a great theory about a horse being able to live without eating, and who demonstrated it so well, that he got his own horse down to a straw a day, and would unquestionably have rendered him a very spirited and rapacious animal on nothing at all, if he had not died, four and twenty hours before he was to have had his first comfortable bait of air. Unfortunately for the experimental philosopher of the female to whose care Oliver Twist was delivered over, a similar result usually attended the operation of her system; for at the very moment when a child had contrived to exist upon the smallest possible portion of the weakest possible food, it did perversely happen in eight and a half cases out of ten, either that it sickened from want and cold, or fell into the fire from neglect, or got half-smothered by accident; in any one of which cases, the miserable little being was usually summoned into another world, and there gathered to the fathers it had never known in this. n

I love the way Dickens can describe callous starvation and casual murder of children for nothing more than greed in such a way that I was actually chuckling because of his lusciously humorous phrasing.

This man could write.

Eventually, Oliver’s life takes another turn from horrendously shitty to mega-painful-chunks-of-misery-filled-crap when he has the temerity to utter the famous words, “Please, sir, I want some more." He gets more…
more beatings,
more starvation,
more verbal abuse,
more neglect,
…and ultimately finds himself alone on the streets with no means of survival. There, Oliver finds himself sucked into a life of petty criminality under the tutelage of “Fagin the Jew” who I thought was one of the most compelling Dickens characters ever.**

[**Note: I know there is a lot of controversy about the portrayal of Fagin being one of the most egregious cases of anti-Semitism in classic literature. I think the criticism is fair, but I also don’t think (based on what I’ve read) that Dickens’ had any malicious intent. It is what it is and everyone can make their own decision on that point.]

I thought the character of Fagin was fascinating and his signature phrase my dear (which he uses in almost every sentence) is still popping into my head more than a week after finishing the novel. Fagin, while irredeemably evil and in some ways a criminal caricature, Dickens draws him with such flair imbues him with a dimension and essence that I found very compelling. His psychology, his calculating intelligence and his soft words masking despicable actions is deftly laid out. At times, I almost got the impression that Fagin was intended to represent “the devil himself” with the way Dickens focuses on his corrupting influence.

n  In short, the wily old Jew had the boy in his toils; and, having prepared his mind by solitude and gloom to prefer any society to the companionship of his own sad thoughts in such a dreary place, was now slowly instilling into his soul the poison which he hoped would blacken it and change its hue for ever. n

On one level, the life of Oliver Twist is one of the harshest, most depressingly sad tales ever put to paper. In lesser hands, the heartache and forlornness of Oliver’s birth and tragic early life could have swallowed up the story and made the book a real chore to get through.

Good news…these are not lesser hands.

Dickens writing is so melodic that the narrative glides over the horror at a safe middle-distance, allowing us to observe and absorb the surroundings without drowning in the pain that Dickens describes. I thought it was masterful.

Intimate yet detached.

Eventually, the plot takes a mysterious turn as a shadowy figure arrives on the scene who has a connection to Oliver and his past that is slowly revealed over the last half of the story. All of this leads to a marvelous ending that makes the rest of the story far more enjoyable in retrospect…sometimes positive, warm and fuzzy resolutions are exactly what a story needs.

Dickens prose is buttery smooth while his mocking humor is cheddar sharp. His balance is outstanding and his ability to poke fun at his readers’ society while avoiding making the reader themselves feel like a target is brilliant. I had such a wonderful time reading this that I am left wondering why everyone doesn’t love Dickens as much as I do.

5.0 stars. HIGHEST POSSIBLE RECOMMENDATION!!

Okay, Ms. Austen…your turn again.

خیلی دوستش داشتم مخصوصا پایانش این دومین کتابی که از دیکنز خوندم وعاشق قلمش شدم.
امسال کل کتاب‌های دیکنز را تهیه نمودم

Check out my Booktube video that looks at the episode of Wishbone focused on Oliver Twist!

One of Dickens' finest works and a powerful example of the social novel. Bonus: it refers to the character of Charlie as "Master Bates" on numerous occasions and, if you're anything like me, you will giggle every single time it happens.

Oliver's mother dies after his birth in a workhouse, and he spends his early childhood in an "infant farm" where the children are starved while the supervisor keeps the money meant for provisions. Oliver later runs away to London where he is taken under the wing of the criminal Fagin who heads a bunch of pickpockets and other thieves. Eventually Oliver is befriended by some kind people who try to protect the young boy. Oliver faces many challenges along the way.

There is a conflict between good and evil throughout the story. The terrible situations that Dickens writes about actually existed in some form -- the workhouses, starving orphaned children, the gangs of petty thieves, domestic violence, and the filthy conditions of certain sections of London. So the story can be thought of as social commentary urging reform, as well as an absorbing novel. Throughout it all Oliver remains sweet and innocent, contrasting with the greed, corruption, and violence of some other characters.

Oliver Twist was first published from 1837-1839 in monthly installments in "Bentley's Miscellany." It was published as a book in 1838. Since it has characters that provoke a strong reaction, it must have been difficult for the public to wait for two years to come to the end of the installments. The novel has been adapted into films and theatrical productions, but the book has some lovely writing and nuances that you just cannot replicate in an adaption. 4.5 stars.

It is hard to read Oliver Twist and convince yourself that Charles Dickens was a young man and fairly inexperienced when he wrote it. It has all the complexity of plot and character that you could hope for in a Victorian novel, even though he only decided it should be a novel when he was halfway through writing it.

I had read it many years ago, when I was just a child myself, and subsequently seen many productions, including the famous musical. I think in all that aftermath, I had buried the stark brutality of this world and the horrid evil that it was to be caught in the web of the criminal element of the time. I remembered Nancy, of course, and the pivotal events, but what I did not remember was the emotional pull and the bleak realism.

It is sad to say that I have thought of Oliver Twist as one of Dickens’ lesser novels. Leave it up to Miss Bionic Jean and the Dickensians group to dissuade me from that misconception. Did Dickens write any “lesser novels”? Well, I have only two left to sample and I’m inclined to say the answer is “NO”.

If you have not read this book, or if you think you know this story from the movies or the musicals, please give it the attention it deserves. We might all simply think of Oliver holding up his bowl and asking for more, but that is a very small portion of what Dickens reveals of the society of his time. And, sadly, as is almost always the case, we have not progressed enough not to still need these lessons now and again.

Κλασική ιστορία που είχα διαβάσει παιδί. Μου έχει αφήσει θετικές αναμνήσεις, αλλά νομίζω- το έχω ξαναπεί - ότι η κατηγοριοποίηση κλασικών έργων ως "παιδικά" μας κάνει να τα διαβάζουμε σε μικρή ηλικία και να μην τα καταλαβαίνουμε καλά. Μετά, όταν μεγαλώσουμε δεν επανερχόμαστε σε αυτά, γιατί από τη μία θεωρούμε ότι τα διαβάσαμε, από την άλλη υπάρχουν επίσης πολλά αξιόλογα βιβλία και ο ελεύθερος χρόνος λιγοστεύει

“Oliver Twist, or the Parish Boy's Progress” is Dickens's second novel, published as a periodical from 1837 to 1839, and as a three-volume book in 1838.

This was my third time reading this book, but my first time reading in it in English, and I enjoyed it a lot more than expected.

I forgot that Oliver’s part was very small.

I read it as I simultaneously listened to the audiobook narrated by Jonathan Pryce, who did a terrific job. He makes reading Dickens an excellent experience.

There are some differences between the paperback and the audiobook, such as how the chapters were divided and the narrator’s choice of words (or perhaps his script was written that way, but it did not change the meaning of a phrase or the situation).

The writing is terrific!

In this book there is a bit of everything: drama, humour, mystery and even murder.

No wonder Dickens is one of my top favourite writers.

This is one of my top 5 favourite books written by Charles Dickens (I have the Penguin Classics edition, several editions as in ebook, and 5 different audiobooks - Jonathan Pryce is my favourite narrator).

Audible has recently released a new adaptation by Marty Ross and produced by Sam Mendes, that it sounds as if we were watching a movie, with several narrators and with a 3D/surround sound that is simply amazing, but it’s just an adaptation of the book, reduced to less than 4 hours, but that’s what motivated me to re-read this book.

PS.: in the ebook edition, the name “Fagin” was used 306 times, and his nickname, “the Jew” was also used 306. I found a bit annoying. The thing is that I do not recall this little fact when I first read the book, or even during the second. Was perhaps lost in translation, or properly edited or my Portuguese edition was an abridged copy (more likely). The audiobook released in 2019 reduced the use of this nickname, in a good number of chapters before the end, where the narrator used the character’s name instead of his nickname.

Excerpt from Wikipedia:
“Dickens (who had extensive knowledge of London street life and child exploitation) explained that he had made Fagin Jewish because "it unfortunately was true, of the time to which the story refers, that that class of criminal almost invariably was a Jew." It is widely believed that Fagin was based on a specific Jewish criminal of the era, Ikey Solomon. Dickens commented that by calling Fagin a Jew he had meant no imputation against the Jewish people, saying in a letter, "I have no feeling towards the Jews but a friendly one. I always speak well of them, whether in public or private, and bear my testimony (as I ought to do) to their perfect good faith in such transactions as I have ever had with them."

Penguin Classics - 608 pages (including cover, introduction, notes and appendixes - the story is 455 pages)

Ebook: 768 pages (default), 209k words - 16 to 18 hours of reading

Audiobook: 18h16, at normal speed, narrated by Jonathan Pryce

A shorter alternative is the latest Audible adaptation, narrated by Brian Cox, Daniel Kaluuya, Nicola Coughlan, Adeel Akhtar, Lucian Msamati, Paapa Essiedu, Kit Connor, Diane Morgan, Julia Davis, Nick Mohammed, Patricia Allison, Emilio Villa Muhammad, Elijah Wolf
Length: 3 hrs and 38 mins

It really is an important and entertaining read even though it’s very sad in several parts. Even the YA versions can’t quite hide away Bill Sykes and his satanic & abusive villainy. As for Fagin, some make him a happy clown .. but no, he isn’t. Nevertheless, Oliver overcomes with a little help from his friends .. but lovely sweet Nancy does not overcome