# The Spectacle Salesman’s Family

Canonical: https://www.bookquiver.com/viola-roggenkamp/the-spectacle-salesmans-family

![The Spectacle Salesman’s Family](https://quivercdn.com/covers/virago/viola-roggenkamp/the-spectacle-salesmans-family_978-18-4408-221-6.jpg?v=2026-05-19%2005%3A47%3A27)

- Authors: [Viola Roggenkamp](https://www.bookquiver.com/viola-roggenkamp)
- Language: en_GB
- Published: 2008-10-16

## Description

Paul Schiefer is a travelling spectacles salesman. Every Monday morning he leaves Hamburg on a week-long sales trip. His wife, his mother-in-law and his two teenage daughters Fania and Vera see him off with abundant hugs and kisses, and they welcome him back with equal exuberance on Friday evening - just in time for Sabbath eve. While her husband is away, Alma Schiefer defends the wellbeing of her family with an explosive mixture of ferocious love and extreme determination. Thirteen-year-old Fania is torn between the comfort of home and the fearful thrills of the unknown outside world, a sixties world that contains student protest, beehive hairdos, Israel and the Six Day War, politics, religion, revolution and . . . the promise of love. Sensual, funny and acerbic, The Spectacle Salesman's Family is a brilliant, vivid portrait of Jewish life in post-Holocaust Germany that continues the Jewish tradition of memorialising, recounting the details in order to hold onto the past and its lessons.

## Editions

### The Spectacle Salesman’s Family

- Publisher: virago
- ISBN: 978-18-4408-221-6
- Pages: 1
- Published: 2008-10-16
- Language: en_GB