Word: torning
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...line, Rabbi Yom Tov Levy, forces himself to slit the throats of 250 of his coreligionists in an 1185 A.D. pogrom in York, England, rather than have them tortured or converted. After this follows an inexorable litany of torment, in which generation after generation of chosen Levys are burned, torn apart by horses, slashed by Cossacks, impaled on stakes, or drip-tortured in eyes, ears, mouths with molten lead. The rare Just Man who dies in bed regards it as God's inexplicable little joke...
Only the United Nations offers the slimmest hope. Apparently torn between NATO allies and the neutrals, the U.S. is really forced to choose among continued tacit support of a patently hopeless program, open support of such a program, or commitment to the UN. The chance is open to establish the international organization not only as a force of order, as in the Congo, but as an effective mediator...
...time, the lobby elevator door popped open and Fidel Castro-arms waving, beard wagging, voice rising and falling with rage-stormed out of the hotel with his pileous crew pounding after him. Behind him he left a string of rooms soaked with cigar smoke, strewed .with molding food, and torn asunder-and Owner Spatz with his ulcer acting up again...
...story's narrator purports to be a ditchdigger in the Kolyma River forced-labor camp, which has been almost empty since a recent amnesty-"only some 10,000 of us, dangerous criminals, were left." With bitter irony, he professes to have flushed the torn-up manuscript of his book down the toilet. It was recovered and pieced together only through the diligence and ingenuity of Tolya and Vitya, two secret policemen, members of "the dread invisible army," who have invented a special sewer-searching technique for screening the citizenry's most private acts...
Here and there a few bright flashes of Bemelmans' wit save Are You Hungry Are You Cold from being just another of the many cloudy apologias for the rebel cult of Depression-born, war-torn youths who cannot come to terms with a world they think their parents botched. But so determined and savage is the heroine that the reader cannot really root for her. He is left only with a slightly subversive feeling of compassion for the baffled and sputtering villain of the piece, Papa the martinet...